Application Server and Web server

Application Server and Web server:

• A Web server exclusively handles HTTP requests, whereas an application server serves business logic to application programs through any number of protocols.
• Webserver mainly handles the Http requests but app server can be used to handle the http, rmi, TCP/IP and many more protocols.  In case of application server, it does the same thing, of getting and gives the response but it can process the requests. The web server can be considered as the subset of app server

Difference between a web server and an application server:

• WebServer can execute only web applications i.e. servlets and JSPs and has only a single container known as Web container which is used to interpret/execute web applications
• Application server can execute Enterprise application, i,e (servlets, jsps, and EJBs) it is having two containers 
• WebContainer (for interpreting/executing servlets and jsps)
• EJB container (for executing EJBs). It can perform operations like load balancing , transaction demarcation etc