Application servers, web servers, browsers…

Every Web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the network, and providing an HTTP response to the requester. The HTTP response typically consists of an HTML document, but can also be a raw text file, an image, or some other type of document.

Common web servers are Apache, IIS, iplanet.

Static pages

Client browser sends a url to web server.

Web server will translate the url into a local file resource and go there.

The Web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client's Web browser. The file is just an html file (or image, or text, or something else). The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself. It will be sent back to client browser.

Dynamic pages

The file on the web server might have CFML tags in it (COLDFUSION). The web server will recognize this and send the file to the cold fusion APPLICATION SERVER that will process the CFML tags…this might mean going to a database and doing stuff…then it will reassemble the output into html and send it back to the web server, which will send it back to the browser.

TOMCAT is another APPLICATION SERVER. In the case of tomcat, if the webserver sees jsp pages, it will send the page to tomcat. Tomcat will compile the jsp and create a java servlet which will do its stuff (connect to database, etc), and then reassemble output into html.

Other application servers are websphere, oracle application server.

Php I think is another one. (server side scripting for Creating dynamic web pages