Besides EAR and EJB, what do I get from a Java EE app server that I don't get in a servlet container like Tomcat?

Question

We use Tomcat to host our WAR based applications. We are servlet container compliant J2EE applications with the exception of org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn.

Answer 1

Cost isn't necessarily a downside as there a few free J2EE servers, e.g. JBoss and Glassfish.

Your question assumes that (J2EE = Servlet + EJB + EAR) and therefore, there's no point in using anything more than a Servlet container if you're not using EJB or EAR. This is simply not the case, J2EE includes a lot more than this. Examples include:

• JTA - Java transaction API
• JPA - Java persistence API
• JMS - Java messaging specification
• JSF - technology for constructing user interfaces out of components

Cheers, Donal