What is the difference between application server and web server?

Question

What is the difference between application server and web server?

Answer 1

In Java terms, there's one more: web container (or more strictly, servlet container). It's, say, in between web server and application server.

A web container in Java terms is an application server that basically only implements the JSP/Servlet part of Java EE and lacks several core parts of Java EE, such as EJB support. An example is Apache Tomcat.