How to choose a web server?

Question

Web servers

Good afternoon!
I am developing an application that will analyze certain data and build all possible graphs.
The application can be structurally divided into 4 parts:
1. Data collection - through the API from another resource, using the HTTP protocol.
2. Storage of the collected information in the database
3. Processing of the received data. Math, math, math.
4. Displaying the processed information to the user in the form of graphs via the HTTP protocol. On the client side, html 5.0, css 3.0, javascript are supported.
I tried to describe the task in a formal language, so that I could be better understood. I hope I achieved the goal)
So, having worked out the concept of the solution, I began to think about choosing specific solutions and went into a stupor.
I need a free and open source web server. Jetty and tomcat immediately came to mind, because the products I used to work on used these web servers and because I know java, and according to the wiki , they are written in java. But starting to study this issue, I realized that I was drowning in information.
I have never been involved in such development, and for me it is still dark, but I don’t want to choose a “finger-to-the-sky” solution. Help to understand what is the difference, what is needed for what tasks, maybe there is some literature in which it is well stated what and why it should be.
Thanks everyone for the help!
P, S, in parallel with Google Google, but the advice of experienced people is always useful =)

Answer 1

You have porridge in your head. The answer to your question is impossible until you say what you are going to develop the back-end part of your software on.
There is another answer "on the forehead", universal: nginx. And, most likely, if you answer the question about the language, this answer will be correct.

Answer 2

For download curl.haxx.se/libcurl
For point 4
https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose
Example 0xc0dec.org/2011/04/02/c-embedded-http-server-with...

Answer 3

You actually only need a web server for the fourth point.
It doesn't matter in your situation.
You can take the Play framework or jRails as a modern web framework. Or just use jsp + any server (the same jetty).
Storing information in the database, again, either take what the framework supports, or some standard way: jdbc, hibernate. But the same play has much more opportunities in this regard, and as for me they look more attractive.
To collect data, you most likely need some kind of scheduler: ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor, akka scheduler. Well, you collect data either in one thread or multi-threaded. If there are more than 10,000 simultaneous connections, asynchronously is better. If less then just multi-threaded.