Understanding servlet container

Question

As a UI devloper and someone with very limited Java knowledge, how do I understand what exactly is servlet container in simple terms ?

I have heard Weblogic, JBoss,

Answer 1

The Java EE architecture is a component oriented system with an articulated container, component model, and a managed life-cycle and mediated inter-component communication.

The Java EE web-container defines the components of this tier (e.g. {Servlet, Filter}), and the contractual interface between the components and the web-container (e.g. ServletContext).

(If coming from .NET, this is effectively the [same conceptual paradigm as the] Component, Container and ISite is the Java EE XML declarative mappings.) [edit]