The standardization of the application server, thanks to Sun’s J2EE specifications, has spawned a wealth of implementations. There are offerings from big players such as Sun, IBM, BEA and Oracle as well as numerous offerings from low-cost vendors and the open-source community.
Like most developers, I participate in a number of technical forums and mailing lists. A recurring topic on servlet-development forums is “Which J2EE server should I use for my servlet-based application?” There are a number of criteria for selecting a server: ease of installation, quality of documentation, reliability, cost and performance. Some of these aspects are readily apparent to the evaluator; but performance seems to generate a lot of discussion with a notable lack of facts. After a quick search, I was surprised that few usable benchmarks have been published comparing the servlet performance of the popular low-cost servers.