If You are confused about Application Servers vs Database Servers. You will get to know here what is Application Servers and Database Servers. I’ll explain about this in detail in this article.
Application servers and database servers are critical components of most enterprise IT environments. While they both serve important roles, they perform different functions. Understanding the distinctions can help when architecting systems and managing infrastructure.
What is an Application Server?
An application server acts as a middleman between client applications (such as web browsers or mobile apps) and database servers. It handles most of the business logic and processing, providing core functions like:
- Managing application execution – The app server runs the application code, controls transactions and access to resources, and handles parallel execution across multiple processors.
- Providing an abstraction layer – App servers provide a consistent platform and set of services, abstracting underlying complexity of heterogeneous systems.
- Offering additional services – Key services include security, role management, workflow, messaging, and more. This facilitates development and delivery of feature-rich applications.
Common application server platforms include WebLogic, JBoss, Tomcat, and WebSphere. They are a core part of multi-tier architectures in larger organizations.
What is a Database Server?
A database server manages databases containing business data and enables storage, retrieval, update, analysis and other functions. Its key roles include:
- Providing the database engine – This software manages the physical storage, access mechanisms, transactions, performance optimization, backups, etc. Top engines include Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL.
- Managing database structure – The database maintains logical structures and relationships through schemas, tables, keys, stored procedures and more. These provide a model for how applications access the data.
- Handling data security and access control – Granular privileges control which users can access what data, helping protect sensitive information. Related capabilities include encryption and activity auditing.
Together, the app and database servers handle the full lifecycle of company data. While the application server facilitates user-facing business logic and processes, the database server manages persistence and storage of the core underlying data. Understanding their complementary roles helps build robust and scalable IT solutions.
Here is some additional detail on key differences between application servers and database servers:
Architecture
Application servers typically follow n-tier architectures, where the server represents the “middle tier” sitting in between clients and databases:
- Client tier – Includes web browsers, mobile apps, desktop programs
- Middle tier – Comprises the application server like Websphere or Weblogic
- Data tier – Consists of database servers like Oracle, MySQL, etc.
This separation of concerns brings modularity and flexibility. App servers can leverage different databases, while databases can support many different apps.
Workloads
Application servers handle business logic processing from many concurrent user application sessions:
- Transaction management
- Application execution workflows
- Connectivity to services/APIs
- Identity management
- Caching and session state
Database servers instead focus more on storage management:
- Persisting data with integrity
- Indexing/query optimization
- Memory and buffer management
- High availability replication
- Batch/analytic processing
This division allows each tier to scale cost-effectively. Cheap app servers handle user loads, passing data to heavily optimized databases.
Programming
Application servers provide a software framework and container, often supporting Java, .NET or scripting languages for custom program logic. Developers write code that leverages built-in libraries and services.
Databases instead rely on declarative languages optimized for data queries and management rather than general programming. SQL, stored procedures, triggers and other data constructs manage information storage and retrieval.
Summary
In summary, application servers are designed for scalability, flexibility and rapid application development – acting as a platform for business logic processing and the user presentation tier. Database servers provide robust, high performance mechanisms for structured data persistence and analysis – serving the critical role of managing enterprise information assets.
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