Tomcat

Learning GlassFish for Tomcat Users
White Paper February 2009

Abstract
There is a direct connection between the Web container technology used by developers and the performance and agility of applications. This paper demonstrates the alignments and differentiators between GlassFish and Tomcat, allowing Tomcat users to make an informed decision about which is right for their environment.Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................................... 3 Overview: GlassFish and Tomcat ..................................................................... 3 GlassFish Web Container Advantages vs. Tomcat Web Container ........................ 4 Usability/Productivity........................................................................................ Reliability and Availability .................................................................................. Security............................................................................................................. Performance and Scalability ............................................................................... 4 5 5 5Web Container Feature Alignment: GlassFish and Tomcat .................................. 6 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 8 For More Information .................................................................................... 8

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Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Executive Summary
For Web 2.0 start-ups,application service providers, and ISVs offering dynamic Web-based applications, the application is the business—and the Web container technology used in the application server can impact business results. The Web container is the part of an app server that manages servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSPs), and other Web-tier components. Web container technology plays a vital role in determining the performanceand adaptability of Web-tier software components, so there is a direct connection between the Web container technology used by developers and the performance and agility of applications. Sun asserts that the Web container features of GlassFish application server are far more extensible, modular, easy to use, and adaptable than those of Apache Tomcat—while offering comparable performance. Withsupport for clustering, persistence, messaging, and other key features that Tomcat lacks, as well as enterprise-class service and support from Sun and the backing of a large and thriving community, GlassFish is a superior alternative for those who wish to move beyond Web-tier application development.

Overview: GlassFish and Tomcat
GlassFish is the open source application server delivered by theGlassFish Community, which was originally launched by Sun in 2005. GlassFish v2 has notched nearly nine million downloads and 300,000 product registrations in 2008. The current version, GlassFish v3 Prelude, features an architecture that is modular by default, allows for rapid, iterative Java Web development, and supports dynamic languages. It is an excellent platform for deploying rich Internetapplications backed by Java or dynamic languages such as jRuby. Sun™ GlassFish Enterprise Server v2 is a commercially supported, Java™ Enterprise Edition (EE) 5 compatible offering. The commercial version adds an enterprise-quality app server to the options available to the open source community and builds on the foundation set by Sun Java System AppServer. Tomcat was started at Apache by a groupthat included Sun and JServ developers; the initial code drop came from Sun. It became the Reference Implementation (RI) for early versions of the Java Servlets and JSP specifications (the RI for the latest specs is GlassFish Server). Tomcat was critical to the early adoption of server-side Java, was available under an open source license, and contributed to the popularity of open source software...