Why always Tomcat?

[Francis Franco Freich, modificado 11 Anos atrás.]

This has always bothered me. Why are all tutorials and support articles use only Tomcat for the Liferay platform? Can Tomcat be used as a full pledged enterprise application server? Why not Glassfish? I am really curious.

[David H Nebinger, modificado 11 Anos atrás.]

Tomcat is a world-class java application server. Where it's roots made it more of a developer/test server, over the years it has evolved to become more stable and quick.

Tomcat is better than GF for Liferay because a full-blown JEE stack is not necessary for Liferay, and I think that's the significant point.

That said, JEE containers such as GF and Jboss are supported, but you can just as easily get Liferay running on Tomcat, Resin, etc.

From Liferay's perspective, running under GF has no added value over a simple app container like Tomcat.

[Francis Franco Freich, modificado 11 Anos atrás.]

From Liferay's perspective, ok. But what about advantages of enterprise of a full-blown application server? Is it relevant at all if you are planning to develop Liferay portlets (e.g. eBanking, elaborate Loan calculators, account inquiries, etc.)?

I see the simplicity of Tomcat a great advantage. I just want to justify it if I want to choose going Tomcat bundle instead of planned GF Server.

Sorry if this looks like a beginner's question, I just recently started to delve in application development as a whole.

[Hitoshi Ozawa, modificado 11 Anos atrás.]

It's just probably because Liferay developers are using Tomcat. Tomcat is light-weight and it's really been tested well enough so it won't bother development. Most of our installation are in jboss because it's full-blown application server and Redhat is able to provide support.

I think another reason may be that most new be users know Tomcat because there are plenty of information available on it so they can get started early. Users using other platforms usually have enough skills to know make things work by themselves. If you're using Glassfish and you're having problems, you probably should be using Tomcat because you'll be able to get more help.