JavaWorld Forums: Tomcat is an application server!

You could do that.

Do you also create your own Linux distribution by adding all of these open source applications yourself to the bare Linux kernel?

It's insane that things like Ubuntu or Debian exist. Bunch of bloated things. Why use Ubuntu when you can just download the Linux kernel and add only that what you need. That way you can also test yourself whether it all work together and you can also upgrade every piece yourself directly from the source. And the best benefit of it all, if something breaks you can fix it yourself.

Hmmm... but let's step back for a second.

It's not only that you -can- do all of the above, you also -have- to do it when creating your own distribution. Again and again. That's a completely unnecessary amount of work that the fine people from Ubuntu have already taken care of.

In a way it's the same with a full Java EE implementation. Sure, you can start with Tomcat and then add JSF first since it's the default webcomponent tech and add JPA a while later for elegant and easy persistence. Then you decide you need some kind of transactions and you'll add JTA. Of course you need to send mails, so you'll add Javamail and activation. Just a little later you discover you need messaging, so JTS is next.

All of a sudden you discover that each of these technologies doesn't just come as a single .jar, but as a whole bunch of them! Each with their own configuration files, their own bug tracking websites. Worse yet, several implementation of these technologies have common dependencies, but in different versions. And -you- have to somehow sort this all out.

Update one of these technologies and you'll have to test whether it still all works together. Upgrade Tomcat to version 6? Hopefully JoTM, which hasn't been upgraded in years still fully works with that...

Trust me, if you go down this path you easily find your self drowning in a mess of dependencies and tons of jar files in your webproject that nobody remembers where they came from.

Now compare that with using a fully tested application server like Jboss or Glassfish. All of those dependencies are already sorted out. If you don't want any tech, just don't use it, or in the case of Jboss, just disable it. When you later on decide you do need something, simply enable it.

Your webproject stays utterly clean this way and there are no dependencies are compatibilities you have to track by yourself. If you need to upgrade; upgrade the whole AS in one go and everything is guaranteed to still work together.

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