Earlier this week, I posted about the importance of analyzing requirements to determine the best technology for solving a given problem. Today, I want to dive deeper and talk about different web servers and where they best fit. Having spent well over a decade developing Java web applications, I’m often quick to assume JBoss or Tomcat is the best answer. But as this article will point out, that’s often simply not the case. (Note: for this article, I am not concerning myself with the difference between a web server and an application server. At the end of the day, if the solution solves the problem, who cares?) First on our list of servers is Apache. Apache has been around since 1995, and is often the first choice for websites. If you run a Linux machine, chances are you already have Apache installed. The real power of Apache lies in the modules you can use to add additional functionality to the server. Two of the most significant enable PHP support and running a reverse proxy. Apache with PHP would be a good choice for a WordPress site, or for eCommerce sites running PHP. However, as a site gets larger, PHP becomes more difficult to manage than other solutions. With reverse proxy support enabled, you’ll often see Apache setup to run in front of other servers – such as JBoss or Tomcat – or to enable load balancing. Speaking of JBoss and Tomcat, these are both excellent servers on their own. Both are intended to run Java web applications which – due to the massive number of available Java libraries – can do just about anything. However, all that power comes with a cost. JBoss and Tomcat servers and applications are not particularly lightweight or easy to setup, and the Java code for many common tasks will be far more complex than other solutions. For example, what if your application makes heavy use of JSON and REST services? While Java will handle this very well, a simple Node.js server may be much more lightweight. I can create a REST server in JavaScript in a fraction of the time of creating a corresponding Java server – regardless of the Java technologies used. Maybe you want all the features of JBoss or Tomcat, but you want to deploy to Microsoft’s Azure platform. Microsoft’s .NET Core platform is an excellent choice. Not only is .NET Core now cross platform (running on Linux and Mac), but their MVC framework is amazing. Furthermore, their entity framework is probably the best of any I have ever used. What about solutions for makers and tech hackers? Python has several server implementations including Flask and Django. Not only is it an excellent language for beginners, but it’s become one of the primary languages used for developing on the Raspberry Pi as well as other hardware platforms. Countless other servers could be mentioned, but it’s easy to see from the above that solutions exist for every possible web server scenario. So, when you go to chose your platform – ask yourself what platform best fits your needs. Find an engineer to analyze the problem and provide recommendations on best technologies. At the end of the day, selecting the right technology will result in a much shorter time to market and substantially lower development costs.