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Apache Tomcat VS Netty

Compare Apache Tomcat VS Netty and see what are their differences

Apache Tomcat logo Apache Tomcat

An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies

Netty logo Netty

Cloud-based real estate management solution
  • Apache Tomcat Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-24
  • Netty Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-23

Apache Tomcat features and specs

  • Open Source
    Apache Tomcat is an open-source software, which means it is freely available for use and modifications. This can significantly reduce the cost of ownership and allows for customization.
  • Community Support
    Being a widely-used open-source server, Tomcat has a large and active community of developers and users who contribute to its documentation, plugins, and forums, providing extensive support.
  • Lightweight
    Tomcat is designed to be a lightweight servlet container, making it faster and less resource-intensive compared to full-blown Java EE application servers.
  • Integration with Popular Frameworks
    Tomcat integrates well with popular Java frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate, making it easier for developers to deploy and manage web applications.
  • Easy to Set Up and Configure
    Tomcat is relatively easy to set up and configure, making it suitable for both development and production environments.
  • Frequent Updates
    Regular updates and patches are released to improve performance, security, and compatibility, ensuring the server is up-to-date with the latest web technologies.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Tomcat

  • Limited Functionality
    While Tomcat is a powerful servlet container, it lacks some of the advanced features found in full-fledged Java EE application servers, which might be necessary for complex enterprise applications.
  • Resource Management
    Tomcat's default configuration might not be suitable for high traffic web applications, requiring significant tweaking and tuning to handle heavy loads effectively.
  • Documentation Quality
    The documentation, while extensive, can sometimes be hard to navigate and understand, especially for beginners. This can slow down the learning curve.
  • Limited Built-in Tools
    Compared to other full-stack application servers, Tomcat comes with limited built-in tooling for monitoring, load balancing, and clustering, often requiring third-party solutions.
  • Security Concerns
    As with any open-source project, security vulnerabilities may emerge. It requires constant monitoring and timely updates to ensure security.
  • Lack of EJB Support
    Tomcat does not support Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), limiting its use in scenarios where EJB is a crucial component of the architecture.

Netty features and specs

  • High Performance
    Netty is designed to be highly performant and scalable. It uses non-blocking I/O, which allows it to handle a large number of connections simultaneously with minimal resource consumption.
  • Flexibility
    Netty is highly customizable. You can easily tailor it to specific requirements by adding, removing, or modifying various handlers in the pipeline.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Netty comes with a rich set of features including support for various protocols, advanced threading models, and a comprehensive library for network programming.
  • Strong Community and Documentation
    Netty has a strong and active community. There are ample resources, including comprehensive documentation and numerous examples, to help developers get started.
  • Cross-Platform
    Netty is Java-based, making it cross-platform and portable. This allows it to be used in a variety of environments without needing specific platform adaptations.

Possible disadvantages of Netty

  • Complexity
    Netty's flexibility and feature-rich nature come with a steep learning curve. Understanding and mastering the API can be challenging, especially for beginners.
  • Memory Management
    High-performance applications with Netty require careful memory management. Improper handling can lead to issues like memory leaks or excessive garbage collection.
  • Manual Configuration
    Netty requires a fair amount of manual configuration, which can increase development time. Developers must set up pipelines, handle threading models, and manage other configurations.
  • Limited Out-of-the-Box Functionality
    While Netty is highly customizable, it doesn't provide much out-of-the-box functionality. Developers often need to build a lot of infrastructure to meet their specific needs.
  • Dependency Management
    Netty's extensive feature set means that it comes with a number of dependencies. Managing these can sometimes be a hassle, especially in larger projects.

Analysis of Apache Tomcat

Overall verdict

  • Apache Tomcat is generally regarded as a reliable and effective solution for serving Java applications. Its widespread use and strong community support make it an excellent choice for developers who require a straightforward and efficient servlet container.

Why this product is good

  • Apache Tomcat is a robust, open-source web server and servlet container used to deploy Java Servlets and JSPs (Java Server Pages). It is developed and maintained by the Apache Software Foundation, which ensures a high level of support and regular updates. Tomcat is known for its lightweight nature, ease of use, and ability to integrate seamlessly with many Java-based applications.

Recommended for

  • Java developers in need of an open-source and lightweight servlet container.
  • Organizations looking to serve Java-based web applications.
  • Development teams that require a flexible and customizable environment with robust community support.

Analysis of Netty

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Netty is a good choice for building scalable and high-performance network applications. Its ability to handle thousands of concurrent connections efficiently and its rich feature set makes it well-suited for various types of network services.

Why this product is good

  • Netty is considered a robust and efficient non-blocking I/O client-server framework that is widely used for developing network applications. It is praised for its performance, scalability, and support for various protocols such as HTTP, WebSocket, and more. Netty's architecture is designed to handle a large number of connections efficiently, making it suitable for high-performance applications. It also provides a strong abstraction layer, which simplifies the development process of complex network applications.

Recommended for

  • Developers building high-performance network systems
  • Applications requiring non-blocking I/O
  • Projects that need to handle a large number of concurrent connections
  • Development of custom communication protocols
  • Scalable real-time applications

Apache Tomcat videos

Introducing Apache Tomcat 8.5

More videos:

  • Review - Webinar: Introduction to Apache Tomcat 8
  • Review - Tcat - The Leading Enterprise Apache Tomcat Application Server

Netty videos

"Netty - The async event-driven network application framework" by Norman Maurer

More videos:

  • Review - Netty Beauty Life : Bag Review "Best Millie" By Veraparisbag เธฃเธตเธงเธดเธงเธเธฃเธฐเน€เธ›เน‹เธฒเธเธฑเธ™เธ„เนˆเธฐ
  • Review - Netty Bird Cosmetics Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Tomcat and Netty)
Web And Application Servers
Web Frameworks
0 0%
100% 100
Application Server
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Tomcat and Netty

Apache Tomcat Reviews

FOSS | Top 15 Web Servers 2021
Java programs are run using Apache Tomcat. To be more precise, it is a Java servlet โ€“ a Java software component that expands the functionality of a web server. Apache Tomcat, released under the Apache License version 2, is used by 0.1% of websites worldwide.
Source: www.zentao.pm
4 Open Source Application Servers (Comparison and Review)
Apache Tomcat is an open-source implementation of several Java technologies. It is the result of a collaboration of the finest developers worldwide. You can get involved with the development in a number of ways.
Source: shadow-soft.com
Top 5 open source web servers
Apache Tomcat is an open source Java servlet container that functions as a web server. A Java servlet is a Java program that extends the capabilities of a server. Although servlets can respond to any types of requests, they most commonly implement applications hosted on Web servers. Such web servlets are the Java counterpart to other dynamic web content technologies such as...
Source: opensource.com
Top 10 Open Source Java and JavaEE Application Servers
It is built upon a modular kernel powered by OSGi, and runs straight on top of the Apache Felix implementation. It is also capable of running with Equinox OSGi or Knopflerfish OSGi runtimes. HK2 abstracts the OSGi module system to provide components, which can also be viewed as services and injected into the run time and uses a derivative of Apache Tomcat as the servlet...

Netty Reviews

We have no reviews of Netty yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Netty should be more popular than Apache Tomcat. It has been mentiond 30 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Tomcat mentions (17)

  • Java News: WildFly 36, Spring Milestones, and Open Liberty Updates
    Versions 11.0.6 and 9.0.104 of Apache Tomcat deliver new features and improvements. The release notes can be found for both versions. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Artifactory: Centralizing Artifact Management for DevOps Success
    Download and Install Tomcat Before downloading, confirm the latest Tomcat build package from the official website. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • How to Deploy Applications Using Tomcat on a Web Server
    First, download the latest version of Tomcat from the official Apache Tomcat website. Choose the version that suits your needs, typically the latest stable release. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Spring Boot Monitoring with Open-Source Tools
    Manual instrumentation allows you to define your Spans within the code itself rather than relying on automatic instrumentation finding the entry point for a trace. Manual instrumentation is especially helpful for applications that donโ€™t use an application server such as Tomcat, JBoss, or Jetty. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Issue with chatgpy
    99% is a huge exaggeration. Two essential deployment tools off the top of my head: Https://tomcat.apache.org/ Https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS71/Developer%20Guide.html. Source: over 2 years ago
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Netty mentions (30)

  • New scalable, fault-tolerant, and efficient open-source MQTT broker
    We use Netty (https://netty.io/) as the source of the MQTT communication, and we build the MQTT features the MQTT broker should support ourselves on top of that. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Modern Async Primitives on iOS, Android, and the Web
    In this space, we also have the somewhat related term blocking. Java's NIO library is one well-known non-blocking tool used for managing multiple tasks on a single Java thread. When listening to sockets, most of the time a thread is just blocked, doing nothing until it receives some data. So, it's efficient to use a single thread for monitoring many sockets, to increase the likelihood of the thread having some... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Lessons learned from picking a Java driver for Amazon ElastiCache for Redis - Part 2
    Given the fact that Lettuce is built with Netty, we also immediately noticed quite an impact on the initialization time (cold start) of our lambda function. Netty is really fast while executing, but takes a bit of time to initialize. The new Lambda Snapstart functionality might help with that. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • what does this error mean
    Io.netty or netty.io is a Java network library, so it does stuff with servers (Minecraft's multiplayer, Chrome websites, local programs talking with each other etc.). Source: over 2 years ago
  • How to invite friends in java?
    If you're still determined, I'll give you two options: 1. Sockets: A simple but primitive way of transferring and receiving data. Everything has to be done synchronously. 2. Netty: A much more robust and flexible asynchronous networking library, but requires much more boilerplate to get started. Source: almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Tomcat and Netty, you can also consider the following products

Apache HTTP Server - Apache httpd has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996

Akka - Build powerful reactive, concurrent, and distributed applications in Java and Scala

Microsoft IIS - Internet Information Services is a web server for Microsoft Windows

Project Reactor - Project Reactor home

LiteSpeed Web Server - LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is a high-performance Apache drop-in replacement.

RxJS - Reactive Extensions for Javascript