Apache Tomcat vs OpenResty

Overview

Apache Tomcat

Stacks16.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes201

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks5.3K

OpenResty

Stacks2.3K

Followers227

Votes0

Apache Tomcat vs OpenResty: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Apache Tomcat and OpenResty are two widely used web server technologies with distinct features and capabilities. Understanding the key differences between these two can help in making an informed decision for selecting the appropriate server technology for a particular use case.

Architecture: Apache Tomcat is a pure Java HTTP server and Java Servlet container, allowing it to execute Java servlets and JavaServer Pages. On the other hand, OpenResty is based on NGINX and provides a web server with extended features for building dynamic web applications using Lua scripting.
Performance: Apache Tomcat is optimized for serving dynamic content with Java-based web applications. OpenResty, on the other hand, excels in handling high concurrency and I/O-bound operations through its event-driven and asynchronous architecture.
Extensibility: Apache Tomcat is extensible through Java-based components, allowing developers to enhance its functionality using Java libraries and frameworks. OpenResty, on the other hand, offers extensive capabilities for extending its core functionality through Lua scripting, enabling developers to customize server behavior with ease.
Caching: Apache Tomcat supports caching of static and dynamic content through configuration settings and caching plugins. In contrast, OpenResty provides built-in support for caching at various levels, including content caching, session caching, and request/response caching, enhancing performance and scalability.
Community Support: Apache Tomcat has a large and active community of Java developers and server administrators, providing extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums. OpenResty, although not as widespread as Apache Tomcat, has a dedicated community focused on NGINX and Lua scripting, offering specialized assistance for building and optimizing web applications.
Security Features: Apache Tomcat offers robust security features for protection against common web vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. OpenResty, with its NGINX core, provides additional security capabilities, such as access control lists (ACLs), SSL/TLS support, and web application firewall (WAF) integration, ensuring secure server operation and data protection.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Apache Tomcat and OpenResty in terms of architecture, performance, extensibility, caching, community support, and security features can guide the selection of the most suitable web server technology for specific use cases.

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Advice on Apache Tomcat, OpenResty

Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
Install apache and tomcat.
Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
Create users on RHEL for application support team.
other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache Tomcat	OpenResty
Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.	OpenResty (aka. ngx_openresty) is a full-fledged web application server by bundling the standard Nginx core, lots of 3rd-party Nginx modules, as well as most of their external dependencies.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 8.0K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 5.3K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 16.9K	Stacks 2.3K
Followers 12.6K	Followers 227
Votes 201	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 79 Easy 72 Java 49 Popular 1 Spring web Cons 3 Blocking - each http request block a thread 2 Easy to set up	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	NGINX

What are some alternatives to Apache Tomcat, OpenResty?

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Related Comparisons

Apache Tomcat vs OpenResty: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Architecture: Apache Tomcat is a pure Java HTTP server and Java Servlet container, allowing it to execute Java servlets and JavaServer Pages. On the other hand, OpenResty is based on NGINX and provides a web server with extended features for building dynamic web applications using Lua scripting.
Performance: Apache Tomcat is optimized for serving dynamic content with Java-based web applications. OpenResty, on the other hand, excels in handling high concurrency and I/O-bound operations through its event-driven and asynchronous architecture.
Extensibility: Apache Tomcat is extensible through Java-based components, allowing developers to enhance its functionality using Java libraries and frameworks. OpenResty, on the other hand, offers extensive capabilities for extending its core functionality through Lua scripting, enabling developers to customize server behavior with ease.
Caching: Apache Tomcat supports caching of static and dynamic content through configuration settings and caching plugins. In contrast, OpenResty provides built-in support for caching at various levels, including content caching, session caching, and request/response caching, enhancing performance and scalability.
Community Support: Apache Tomcat has a large and active community of Java developers and server administrators, providing extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums. OpenResty, although not as widespread as Apache Tomcat, has a dedicated community focused on NGINX and Lua scripting, offering specialized assistance for building and optimizing web applications.
Security Features: Apache Tomcat offers robust security features for protection against common web vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. OpenResty, with its NGINX core, provides additional security capabilities, such as access control lists (ACLs), SSL/TLS support, and web application firewall (WAF) integration, ensuring secure server operation and data protection.

Apache Tomcat vs OpenResty

Overview