Java Servers vs Servlet/JSP Containers?

Question

Java

I read in the wiki article that there are Java servers, Servlet / JSP containers, EJB containers. I used to hear about Tomcat and Jetty, I thought these were servers, but no, containers ...

• The question is theoretical - what is the difference between a server and a container ?
  
• Practical - what to choose for store deployment (Spring MVC)?
  
• When and why is it worth using Java server/container + Nginx (for statics and proxying to different servers)?
  

Answer 1

The application server must comply with the JEE specification, and be able to run full-fledged JEE applications. That is, include a servlet container, an MQ server, an EJB container, JTA, and something else (see wiki). The reference implementation is Glassfish, a product of the former Sun, now Oracle. The most popular are Weblogic, IBM Webspehre, JBOSS. There is an open source implementation - TomEE. A servlet container is specifically designed to run Java web applications. The most commonly used is Apache Tomcat.