Servlet technology is robust and scalable as it uses the java language. Before Servlet, CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripting language was used as a server-side programming language. But there were many disadvantages of this technology. We have discussed these disadvantages below.
There are many interfaces and classes in the servlet API such as Servlet, GenericServlet, HttpServlet, ServletRequest, ServletResponse etc.What is a Servlet?
Servlet can be described in many ways, depending on the context.
- Servlet is a technology i.e. used to create web application.
- Servlet is an API that provides many interfaces and classes including documentations.
- Servlet is an interface that must be implemented for creating any servlet.
- Servlet is a class that extend the capabilities of the servers and respond to the incoming request. It can respond to any type of requests.
- Servlet is a web component that is deployed on the server to create dynamic web page.
What is web application?
A web application is an application accessible from the web. A web application is composed of web components like Servlet, JSP, Filter etc. and other components such as HTML. The web components typically execute in Web Server and respond to HTTP request.