Glassfish vs Tomcat for RESTful Services

rest tomcat glassfish
Adil picture Adil · Jul 17, 2012 · Viewed 12.3k times · Source

I have a .net development background but relatively new to Java world. We have started development of RESTful services (public web APIs) with JAX-RS to be consumed mostly by mobile platforms (Android, iPhone, windows phone etc.)

  1. We need some guidance on selection of appropriate server such as Tomcat or Glassfish etc.? Please share reason as well.
  2. Also please guide whether our decision of JAX-RS is appropriate for build RESTful services.

Answer

user504674 picture user504674 · Jul 17, 2012

Tomcat is a servlet container only, which simply means that it will not provide support for Java EE features.

More than looking at RESTful services, see what you intend to use to implement your tier functionality. If you are sticking with Servlet/JSP only, then Tomcat would definitely be a very reasonable choice. If you need to use JavaEE features, then look at GlassFish.

Purely in terms of functionality, GlassFish can do everything Tomcat can, and a lot more, because it is a fully JavaEE compliant application server. But, take note, that Tomcat is used to great effect for a lot of complex applications (that don't use Java EE features).

In terms of performance, Tomcat is lightweight, starts really fast, and is well supported in the Eclipse environment. GlassFish startup is a bit slower (around 11 seconds on my horrible laptop), but deploys are blazing fast.

Tomcat has a manager application for basic app deployment, but JNDI and similar resource configurations (like user configs) have to be done by editing XML files manually. Glassfish has a nice administration console which allows you to do all this from a central UI without manual configuration editing.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that your choice should be based solely on what you intend to use from the Java/Java EE APIs, and the server that minimally fits that bill. Don't go by any popularity consensus, as your requirements are your best guide.

As far as implementing with JAX-RS is concerned, I don't see any concerns there. I've worked with Jersey, and here's a sneak peek looking at the two: http://www.slideshare.net/pelegri/jersey-and-jaxrs-presentation

Lastly, as far as SSL is concerned: Both Tomcat and Glassfish will happily do SSL, no issues in either whatsoever.

GlassFish SSL tut: http://javadude.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/getting-started-with-glassfish-v3-and-ssl/

Good luck.

Related questions

ClassNotFoundException when starting tomcat

I'm trying to make a REST web service. My project looks like : The traceback is : 8 déc. 2011 18:31:36 org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init INFO: The Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in production environments was not found on …

Read More
Tomcat failing to deploy .war

I'm trying to follow this tutorial on creating a simple REST web service, however I get to deploying it on tomcat and it throws an exception: FAIL - Application at context path /restful could not be started FAIL - Encountered …

Read More
creating spring rest services without using spring boot

I've followed the Getting Started tutorial on spring.io for building REEST services https://spring.io/guides/gs/rest-service/. The problem is that this tutorial only explain how to produce a standalone running jar with tomcat embedded using spring boot. …

Read More