Developers currently working in Apache Tomcat could profit from reading the Oracle white paper "Learning Oracle GlassFish Server for Tomcat Users," which highlights the GlassFish features such as support for clustering, persistence, and messaging that, along with still others, are not available in Tomcat. Further, the white paper contends that, while comparable performance, the Web container features of Oracle GlassFish Server are far more extensible, modular, easy to use, and adaptable than those of Tomcat.

Tomcat and GlassFish are similar in that both are Web containers, the white paper points out, adding that GlassFish is as well a collection of Java EE containers that offer the following capabilities:

• Easier migration path with GlassFish's out-of-the-box Enterprise JavaBeans, Java Persistence API, Java message Service, etc. Each of these must be added to Tomcat.

• Support for clustering via a load balancer and for high availability failover, again an out-of-the-box capability with GlassFish that enables the solution to meet stringent, enterprise-class service-level agreements (SLAs).

• Superior administration and monitoring that enables centralized administration through a management console and via a command-line interface. GlassFish includes a callflow monitoring feature that allows a developer to discover where an application is spending most of its time, the white paper adds.

• Support for such scripting languages as Ruby/JRuby, Python/Jython, Groovy, PHP, JavaScript/Phobos, Scala, and others

Even though both Tomcat and GlassFish Server are Web containers, that aspect of GlassFish has advantages over Tomcat in such considerations as usability/productivity, reliability and availability, security, and performance and scalability.

The white paper presents a helpful tabular comparison between Tomcat and GlassFish servers 2 and 3 that lists the Tomcat features present in both of the Oracle solutions and the features in GlassFish that are absent from Tomcat.

The white paper concludes that, "The choice of an application server is highly strategic for businesses, and Oracle GlassFish Server has proven to be a superior strategic option for developers of next-generation applications.

More Information

Datasheet for the Oracle GlassFish Server

Datasheet for the Oracle GlassFish Server Control

System Requirements for the Oracle GlassFish Server

Oracle GlassFish Server Released - Community and Commercial Versions

Ready for Business: Oracle GlassFish Server [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter