Trying to get the picture

[jbean]

I've done web apps on Apache/tomcat with Oracle backend using beans and JSP/servlets for front end presentation. Why would I use an App Server?
In Simple terms, what functionality does it add or improve.
Is it a replacement for Apache/tomcat?

Thanks for any insight I am missing

[websel]

Wow!,

Then you just nocked on the door of a whole new world! :-)
An app-server like Jboss takes you a lot of work from your hands. You can compare an app server to a whole town with workers.
The workers handle for you:
- Load balancing, Failover, security
- Complete cover storage of your data to a database
- Lots of prebuild classes that handle most common tasks
- 100% transparant distribution of your classes
- lots and lots more i just forgot here.
I just take a simple example database acces.
When you are alone (no app server) you need to do every yourself like building a database, writing your routines to store/retrieve your data from a database. With an app server you just kick your classes to the CMP container and they will handel the structure, commit retrieve and inserting of your data. It even constructs the database for you.
Just look at the sun site and read articles about J2EE CMP,BMP Beans etc and i'm sure you get wild! :-)
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/J2EE/Intro/
http://www.theserverside.com/resources/article.jsp?l=Is-EJB-Appropriate
You can get a clear picture with this tutorial:
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/tutorial/

Enjoy! Hope to see you back here :-) It's quite heavy stuff! I'm currently learning it as well.

Knf!
Wessel de Roode