How does Jetty relate to Jakarta Tomcat?

Jakarta Tomcat is the apache/Sun effort to produce a reference implementation of the Servlet API. The Tomcat project is the merge of the apache JSERV container and Sun's original reference implementation. However, the Jakarta project has now grown as is now providing a wide range of framework components related to java webapplications.

Tomcat is primarily a Servlet Container that can be used by various HTTP servers, normally as a separate process. It does contain a Java HTTP server, but it is only a simple implementation. Tomcat is part of the Jakarta project and forms an element within a larger framework.

Jetty is both a HTTP server and a Servlet Container, in a single JVM. The focus of Jetty is to provide a full featured implementation of the HTTP/1.1 protocol and a standards compliant Servlet Container.

Jetty is intended to be deployable as a complete HTTP/Servlet component within a Java application. The different focus of Jetty allows it be smaller, faster, simpler and more flexible than Tomcat.

Note that Tomcat 4 is also a HTTP/1.1 server and is much improved on previous versions of Tomcat. However, it remains to be seen how independant Tomcat4 remains or if it will become part of the extended Jakarta platform.

Jetty uses the jasper JSP engine from the jakarta project for JSP serving. The Jakarta-watchdog test suite is also used to test Jetty's compliance with the specification.


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