application server and web server

[beginner]

what's different between application server and web server?

[sambavan]

Application server incorporates the webserver components and is the middle tier tool for the deployment of the components. Where as the web server would hold a direct interaction to the database and not much fine grain tuning and security implementation is possible.

Sam

[kmesser]

OAS is Oracle's proprietary middle tier application server which is specifically designed to deploy the Oracle Developer products such as Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports in a three tier architecture such as an intranet or the internet.

[rcherch]

OAS is on the death list and is being replaced Oracle iAS.

Sam, good simple explaination.

[kmesser]

Many youngsters and junior IT people are eager to identify any product that is not the newest version as essentially junk, and soon to die.

Maybe Oracle want's you to replace OAS with 9iAS, but no desupport notice has been issued for 4.0.8.2 (most recent release), for any platform. Maybe that's because there's a large installed base who would gain little and expend much to migrate to 9iAS.

So, back to the question at hand:

application server - an application which takes some type of development product, such as a compiled Oracle Forms application (*.FMX), and produces some type of output which can be used by a web server to display the output over the web.

web server - an application which takes some files, data or application server output and provides it to a client application for display or manipulation. Commonly, web servers provide output directly to the browsers of people surfing the web.

OAS and iAS do both.