What is the best application server that goes with Spring?

[cristian.vrabie]

Hello everybody,
I'm very new to Spring or web development on Java for that matter. Spring got me dazzled with its power and I'm sure I'll stick to it for a very long time. Go Java development, go!

I've been studying hard in the last period but now it's time to write some real applications, and I need to choose an application server (i would go with tomcat but i need a real server). What do you think it's the best server that goes with Spring at this moment. From what I've seen GlassFish is very nice, but has big problems with hibernate, and I really really like/need hibernate.

What is the server you had the least amount of troubles?

Thanks in advance!

[cristian.vrabie]

By the way, i really like the Maven philosophy so i think i will want to stick with that too.

[Marten Deinum]

In what regard isn't tomcat suiting your needs? I used it on several projects for development as well as in production. So I don't see your problem. There are some things you cannot use/do EJB's for instance, but you probably don't want to use that anyway...

[dr_pompeii]

(i would go with tomcat but i need a real server)

i could be agree many years ago when Spring were not created yet

the classic boom of sun with J2EE and its EJB
that offer some features that cant be developed with tomcat

if right now it happens, i dont know, but Spring is here, this is fine

regards

[spiff]

As the previous posters have mentioned, Tomcat can often be sufficient for your web application needs. Make sure you have valid reasons to rule it out, such as the need for an EJB implementation. Another great web container that's similar to Tomcat is Jetty, which is very fast and easily embeddable.

As for Glassfish, I've used it without any problems and our application was using JPA / Hibernate. IMHO it's an excellent application server that's particularly easy to manage and operate. On top of that, it's open source and supported by Sun. Hard to go wrong with that.

Cheers,
GB

[cristian.vrabie]

Thanks everybody for your answers. So, Tomcat has gone a long way since the last time I checked. You're right, since this is a fresh project I won't use old style EJB's and I can use Tomcat since it seems faster.

One thing that I feel like mentioning is that one of the reasons that made me consider Glassfish is the automatic clustering and http balancing support. Do you know if it's more efficient to use the ones the app servers are offering (like in Glassfish) or a 3rd party solution used with Tomcat has equally good results?

[jdpujara]

I have tried hard but could not locate 'Facts and Figures' to conclude which one is better between Jetty and Tomcat for running Spring Web App. [on scalability, Performance etc]
I intent to use embedded flavor of Tomcat or Jetty.

Regards,
Jaideep

[Jabberz]

the Jetty vs Tomcat debate is not something easily answered in a forum. They're both very good projects that always one up each other with better features, better performance, etc. You will have to come up with a criteria and probably do some of your own tests that emulate your target environment to get a good decision. In addition to performance, you can also look at configuration/management, JMX controls, memory foot print, etc.

I've used both many times and been very pleased with both environments.

There should also be no problems using Spring in the big app servers either.

[jdpujara]

Thanks Jebberz.....that suffices.