Introduction
Understanding the differences between a server, a web server, and an application server can be challenging. In many cases, tech enthusiasts use the terms interchangeably. This article, targeted at newbies to the concept of servers, purposes to clarify the differences.
What is a Server
A server is broad term that computer professionals use to refer to a device that avails digital resources to other computers (clients) over a network. A server device could be a physical computer or a virtual machine.
Several types of severs exist. Web servers avails web pages to client computers. Application servers execute set functionalities for the client. Additionally, mail servers facilitate sending and receiving emails between clients. Furthermore, system engineers routinely configure servers to facilitate file storage and transfer, in which case the server becomes a File Transfer Protocol server.
Web Servers
A web server is a software device that serves web pages. This server type understands the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol communication; the server can communicate with client computers requesting web pages. A web server delivers static resources to clients. Static resources are digital content that are served as is, without any modification. Examples of popular web servers in the market include Apache and Nginx.
Application Servers
An application server is a software device that executes business logic. Business logic, in this case, refers to a website's core functionality. Consider an ecommerce website where customers can browse product listings. An application server runs the logic that involves the retrieval of product types from a database and display on the frontend.
Web Versus Application Servers
Web and application servers have one fundamental difference; web servers process static requests while application servers handle dynamic requests. As mentioned, servers deliver static resources to the client unchanged. Comparatively, when a client requests a dynamic resource—could be a list of the available products in an ecommerce website—an application server performs modifications on the existing resources to deliver the right content to the client.
Conclusion
To recap, a server is a physical computer or software component that hosts several software capable of serving web pages, mails, files and running business logic. A web server is a software device that servers web pages. An application server runs business logic. Furthermore, the basic difference between a web and application server is in the nature of resources they serve.
Top comments (0)