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Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server?

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On 6/10/16 3:48 PM, Qu0ll wrote:
> DISCLAIMER: Server-side Java is not my forte.
>
> I have often noticed that in many places where I have worked, the
> companies have both a full application server such as JBoss/Wildfly AND
> a web server (typically Apache) installed and both seem to work together.
>
> 1) Is this necessary and if so, why?
> 2) What does a web server "provide" that an application server doesn't?
> 3) What is the nature of the relationship or interaction between both
> applications?
>
It isn't always necessary, but they provide different specializations.

The Apache (or nginx) provides some basic file serving, redirects, URL 
masking, etc...  They also make it easier to serve multiple applications 
behind a single host.

Where I work, we used to have many more layers than even that:


1. Akamai
2. Load Balancer
3. Apache
4. Load Balancer
5. Custom Proxy #1 (For non-cachable/real-time decisions)
6. Load Balancer
7. Caching Proxy
8. Load Balancer
9. Custom Proxy #2 (For cachable global logic)
10. Load Balancer
11. Web Application(s)


Because we used an HTTP API, it went even deeper.  The "Web Application" 
would call into our API stack:

1. Load Balancer
2. Apache
3. Caching Proxy
4. HTTP API Application(s)

The API would then connect to MySQL or SOLR (Solr being another 
web-app), and other data-sources.

Could we do all of this in a single application? Yes! But it wouldn't be 
quite as robust, would be harder to manage, and would require us to 
right a lot more custom code to do the functions that Apache did for us.

We've since simplified our architecture a lot (no more custom proxies), 
and use nginx instead of apache.

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Thread

Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Qu0ll <qu0ll64@gmail.com> - 2016-06-11 08:48 +1000
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> - 2016-06-11 00:43 -0700
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-11 12:41 -0700
    Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-11 12:45 -0700
      Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-06-11 17:45 -0400
        Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-12 21:05 -0700
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-06-11 17:44 -0400
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Qu0ll <qu0ll64@gmail.com> - 2016-06-16 06:58 +1000
    Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-07-07 22:31 -0400
      Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-07-08 08:31 -0700

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