Comparison of application servers

Application servers are system software upon which web applications or desktop applications run. Application Servers consist of web server connectors, computer programming languages, runtime libraries, database connectors, and the administration code needed to deploy, configure, manage, and connect these components on a web host. An application server runs behind a web Server (e.g. Apache or Microsoft IIS) and (almost always) in front of an SQL database (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL or Oracle). Web applications are computer code which run on top of application servers and are written in the language(s) the application server supports and call the runtime libraries and components the application server offers.

There are many application servers and the choice impacts the cost, performance, reliability, scalability, and maintainability of a web application.

Proprietary application servers provide system services in a well-defined but proprietary manner. The application developers develop programs according to the specification of the application server. Dependence on a particular vendor is the drawback of this approach.

An opposite but analogous case is the Java EE platform discussed below.

Java EE application servers provide system services in a well-defined, open, industry standard. The application developers develop programs according to the Java EE specification and not according to the application server.

A Java EE application developed according to Java EE standard can be deployed in any Java EE application server making it vendor independent.

This article compares the features and functionality of application servers, grouped by the hosting environment that is offered by that particular application server.

BASIC

• Run BASIC - An all-in-one BASIC scriptable application server, can automatically manage session and state

C

• Appaserver

C++

• Tuxedo - Based on the ATMI standard, is one of the original application servers.
• Tntnet - Includes a template engine which allows embedding C++ code in HTML pages. Templates are compiled before run-time, and thus very fast. Multi-threaded, supports object lifetime via scoped variables.
• CPPSERV - C++ servlet container.
• Wt - A web toolkit similar to Qt permitting GUI-application-like web development with built-in Ajax abilities.
• POCO C++ Libraries - A collection of open source class libraries including Poco.Net.HTTPServer.html
• CppCMS
• uWSGI^[1]

Erlang

• CloudI - Provides C/C++, Elixir/Erlang, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby integration. ^[2]

Haskell

• Happstack
• Hyena (Web_Server)
• Snap (Web_Server)
• Warp (Web_Server)

Java

Product	Vendor	Edition	Last release date	Java EE compatibility [3]	Servlet spec	JSP spec	License
ColdFusion	Adobe Systems	10.0.11	2013-07-09	6	2.5	2.1	Proprietary
Dynamo AS	ATG	6.3	2005-03	1.3	2.3	1.2	Proprietary
Enhydra	Lutris	5.1.9	2005-03-23	No			GPL
Enterprise Server	Borland	6.7	2007-01	1.4	2.4	2.0	Proprietary
Geronimo	ASF	3.0.1	2013-05-28	6 Full Platform	3.0	2.2	Apache License
GlassFish	GlassFish Community	4.1	2014-09	7 Full Platform	3.1	2.3	CDDL, GPL
iPlanet Web Server	Oracle Corporation	7.0.21	2015-04	Yes[4]	2.5	2.1	Proprietary
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform	Red Hat	6.3.0.GA	2014-08-06	6 Full Platform	3.0	2.2	LGPL
Jetty	Eclipse Foundation	9.2.6	2014-12-05	7 (partial[5])	3.1	2.3	Apache 2.0, EPL
JEUS	TmaxSoft	7	2012-06	6 Full Platform	3.0	2.2	Proprietary
JOnAS	OW2 Consortium (formerly ObjectWeb)	5.3	2013-10-04	6 Web Profile	3.0	2.2	LGPL
JRun	Adobe Systems	4 updater 7	2007-11-06	1.3	2.3	1.2	Proprietary
NetWeaver Application Server	SAP AG	7.3	2011-05-31	5	2.5	2.1	Proprietary
Oracle Containers for J2EE	Oracle Corporation	10.1.3.5.0	2009-08	1.4	2.4	2.0	Proprietary
Orion Application Server	IronFlare	2.0.7	2006-03-09	1.3	2.3	1.2	Proprietary
Resin Servlet Container (Open Source)	Caucho Technology	4.0.36	2013-04-25	6 Web Profile [6]	3.0	2.2	GPL
Resin Professional Application Server	Caucho Technology	4.0.36	2013-04-25	6 Web Profile	3.0	2.2	proprietary
Ruby	Ruby	1.2	2015-01-01	No			LGPL
Siwpas	MechSoft	2.0.0	2011-07-29	yes[7]	3.0	2.2	Proprietary
TomEE	ASF	1.7.1	2014-09-12	6 Web Profile	3.0	2.2	Apache License
WebLogic Server	Oracle Corporation (formerly BEA Systems)	12.1.3	2014-06-26	6 Full Platform	3.0	2.2	Proprietary
WebObjects	Apple Inc.	5.4.3	2008-09-15	partial[8]			Proprietary
IBM WebSphere Application Server	IBM	8.5.5.3	2014-08-26	6 Full Platform	3.1	2.2	Proprietary
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core	IBM	8.5.5.3	2012-06-15	6 Web Profile	3.1	2.2	Proprietary
WebSphere AS Community Edition	IBM	3.0.0.4	2013-06-21	6 Full Platform	3.0	2.2	Proprietary
WildFly	Red Hat	8.2.0.Final	2014-11-20	7 Full Platform	3.1	2.3	LGPL

JavaScript

• Broadvision - Server-side JavaScript AS. One of the early entrants in the market during the eCommerce dot-com bubble, they have vertical solution packages catering to the eCommerce industry.
• Wakanda Server - Server-side JavaScript Application Server integrating a NoSQL database engine (WakandaDB^[9]), a dedicated HTTP Server, User and Group management and an optional client-side JavaScript framework.
• Node.js - implements Google's V8 engine as a standalone (outside the browser) asynchronous Javascript interpreter. A vigorous open-source developer community on GitHub has implemented numerous supporting products, notably npm for package management and Connect and Express app server layers.
• Phusion Passenger

Lua

• Barracuda Application Server - An embedded C source code library designed primarily for embedded systems and with a Lua program API that is similar to Servlets. The library is primarily used for industrial control and management and is used by companies such as Honeywell, ABB, Mitsubishi Electric, and Schneider Electric as a base for designing H2M and M2M for industrial electronics.
• Mako Server - Fast application server designed primarily for resource constrained POSIX systems. The Mako Server is derived from the Barracuda Embedded Application Server. A full featured Lua Web Tutorial for the Mako Server is available on the Android Market.

.NET

Microsoft

Microsoft positions their middle-tier applications and services infrastructure in the Windows Server operating system and the .NET Framework technologies in the role of an application server:

• Internet Information Services web server
• Windows Server AppFabric
• .NET Framework (Windows Communication Foundation, Web Services, .NET Remoting, MSMQ, ASP.NET, ADO.NET)
• Distributed Transactions, COM+
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (ADLDS), Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Authorization Manager

Third-party

• Cc Devnet Data Access Server - A Generic Application Server for systems that require Windows Desktop, iOS and/or Android data-centric clients.
• Mono - Developed by Novell, Inc., licensed under GPL.
• Base4 - An open source project.
• TNAPS Application Server - A freeware application server, developed by TN, LLC.

Objective-C

• GNUstepWeb - WebObjects 4.5 compatible, released under the LGPL.
• SOPE inspired by WebObjects extended with Zope concepts, used as foundation for SOGo.

Python

• Django-cms - By Divio AG
• Google App Engine
• Gunicorn
• mod_python
• mod_wsgi
• Phusion Passenger
• Paste
• Tornado
• Twisted
• Web.py^[10]
• Web2py
• uWSGI^[1]
• WSGId^[11]
• Zope - By Zope, Inc.

Perl

• Catalyst
• Dancer
• Mojolicious
• Plack
• mod_perl
• uWSGI^[1]

PHP

• PHP-FPM
• Quercus
• Zend Server

Ruby

• Mongrel
• Thin, based on Mongrel
• Phusion Passenger
• Puma
• Rainbows
• Torquebox
• Unicorn
• uWSGI^[1]

Smalltalk

• Seaside - A continuations based web application server based on Smalltalk

Tcl

• AOLserver - Released as NaviServer before being bought by AOL in 1995, this was a pioneering web application server - for the first time integrating a multi-threaded HTTP server with built in scripting language and database pools with abstraction layer.

See also

• Content management system
• Web application framework
• Comparison of web application frameworks
• Comparison of server-side JavaScript solutions

References

Web interfaces Server-side Protocols CGI SCGI FCGI AJP WSRP WebSocket Server APIs C NSAPI C ASAPI C ISAPI COM ASP Java servlet container Portlet container CIL System.Web.IHttpHandler Python WSGI Ruby Rack JavaScript JSGI Perl PSGI Lua WSAPI Apache modules mod_jk mod_lisp mod_mono mod_parrot mod_perl mod_php mod_proxy mod_python mod_wsgi mod_ruby Phusion Passenger Topics Web resource vs. Web service Open API Webhook Application server comparison Client-side Browser APIs C NPAPI LiveConnect XPConnect C NPRuntime C PPAPI NaCl COM ActiveX Framework APIs W3C Audio Canvas CORS File Geolocation IndexedDB Microdata SSE SVG Video WebRTC WebSocket Web messaging Web storage Web worker XMLHttpRequest Khronos WebCL WebGL Others Gears Web SQL Database (formerly W3C) Topics Mashup Web IDL