What Is an Application Server and What Is It Used For?
Have you ever thought what is an application server? It is a customized computer system built with high-end hardware and software to run complex applications. Web servers are considered application servers too and are mainly used for web applications. They will have limitations and restrictions on the application you try to run on them. In contrast, the application servers offer you the freedom to run any application without trouble. It means the hardware and software of the system can be utilized at an optimum level and even customized to meet the requirements.
Why Do We Need Application Servers?
It offers the environment to run the specific application and is used for various purposes. Here are some examples:
Running custom web applications
Hosting a Hypervisor on the server to manage the separate virtual machines
Monitor the software updated with specially design application
Data processing received from another server
An application server offers the platform to run the different software that allows the users to create the new web application and the server to test the application. It is used to run complex applications that require multiple computations from a single source. The allocated task is processed simultaneously on various clouds, web-based software, and different applications.
What Is an Application Server Definition?
Understanding this concept would give you insight into how the information is processed on the webserver. It is primarily used to install, operate, and host the required application to run a particular program. Thus, it serves the end-users, IT services, and organizations, performs as a hosting server, and runs business applications.
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Depending on the purpose, you will find the different services are run on the server. For example, an application server can be used as a web server. In addition, some organizations install it to manage the database delicately. These kinds of servers are known as the database application server.
Companies use the general-purpose application server where different types of applications are run and tested for their output. And finally, the enterprise application server is mainly used by big enterprises. It offers you the flexibility to run your graphical user interface for management. These custom design interfaces are made for the users working in the organization to manage the application server comfortably. It is also helpful for transaction processing, pooling connection, running security tasks, and messaging.
Many high-end types of this server are available in the industry, including Apache Geronimo, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, J2EE, WebLogic, Apache Tomcat, Glassfish, etc. They all offer standard features such as clustering, integrated redundancy, high availability for monitoring, high-performance distributed application service, and complicated database access.
It syncs with the media servers, web servers, and session controllers to provide the logical output based on the query inserted by the end-users. When the user enters the query to fetch specific data, the instruction is sent to the application server. The pre-installed program runs the various computations to find the relevant answers using the database entries and sends the result back to the user’s computer.
Instead of running the web server program, the query is sent to the dedicated application server. It would have permission to access multiple software and operating system information to run the program.
It communicates with different systems and gets the output stored in the database. It works as an indigenous machine that tries to generate probable answers to the query using other operating systems, databases, custom programs, and software. The contemporary application servers would support multimedia IP communication, including voice, text, chat, video, and presence.
They are highly effective when you combine them with the webserver. One of the primary reasons they are used in the organization is to offer a centralized system to keep all the applications up to date and upgraded. The applications will be vulnerable to security issues if they are not upgraded. In addition, running a different version of the app to access the business would lead to software compatibility issues.
It prevents any SQL injection through cyber attacks. The software installed on the application server validates the queries before sending them to the core business application to produce the logic. In addition, it ensures that the text entered in the webpage is not exploiting the SQL call.
A dedicated application server also boosts the performance of the heavily used and large-size applications. It gives you more control over the traffic and establishes a strong connection to run the process.
It enhances the ability of the users to work at the scale. You can run the high-end application without any trouble and make quick progress in developing or managing your enterprise-level application.
The application and web server might appear similar, but they are pretty different. Application servers work as the intelligent machine that processes the user’s query using the pre-defined logic to produce the outcome. It ensures the best result to the query with the help of the stored database and the software installed in it. On the other hand, the webserver works with HTTP requests, and its primary job is to handle the HTTP request of the website and return the static content to the web browser, including the images, HTML, and CSS files, Javascript, etc.
It goes beyond the standard content presentation in the web browser. It runs the complex process in the background that includes the transaction handling, pooling information from the database, running the logic to produce the outcome based on the user’s input, load balancing, caching files, clustering, communication between multiple network computers, and OS, etc.
We hope the article has helped you learn what an application server is and how it works. It is used in everyday communication by the web hosting provider. Without it, the system could not run the complex query, or it will difficult to manage the database queries. So the next time you enter any query in the browser, you know that it is processed by the application server running in the background. For more related details, you can read this article.
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