As a naive to server side development works, i was very confused about two words Apache server & Tomcat server. I was thinking Apache Tomcat is a single acroynm for Server deployment. But there lies the difference if some one says Apacher server and Tomcat or Apache Tomcat server.
Many of you might be aware of these distinctions, but for starters like me thought it could be useful.
ASF is Apache software Foundation, which was formed in 1994, when a group of talened ppl launched a HTTP server written in C language to promote or ease the server side developement of web.
It was named 'Apache HTTP Server'. If somebody says their webserver is running over Apache it means, they use Apache HTTP Server as the core part for HTTP transactions, and on top of the http server webserver logic would have been written to serve some requests ( or provide some service ).
Sun Micro System had their own Java webserver which is also nothing but a HTTP server written in Java language. And over the period of server side development Sun released Java Servlet API to handle multiple request coming to a HTTP server and much more features were provided for server side development ( 1994).
In 1997 , a developer from SUN developed 'Tomcat' as Servlet container which used JAVA HTTP server for http transactions. And later Sun donated Tomcat to make it as Open free software and the Webserver was then called as 'Apache Tomcat'.
So the main difference comes is, Tomcat is a pure Java based HTTP web server for Java code to run ( which is noting but Java Servlets & JSP ).
Where as Apache HTTP server is HTTP server written in c to support server development in C.
You cannot deploy a webapplication written in Java ( JSP, Servlet ) and deploy it in different webserver which is not compatible with JSP & Servlet. And similary you cannot develop a webapp in C or CGI and try to deploy in Tomcat webserver which in purely Java based.
Since Java & Tomcat is open source and freely available to every one, most of the server side hosting is done using Tomcat webserver. And it is available for all platforms Linux,WIndows,MAC os, UNIX,Solaris & many more...
This way, ASF has given many open source products which is making the server side development for WWW more easier and faster.
Wiki Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Tomcat
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