Java web application in a Servlet container vs. standalone

Question

What are the advantages of building a small Java web app to run in a Servlet container (like Tomcat) vs. building a standalone Java app with a built-in web server and runnin

Answer 1

An embedded Jetty is also a servlet container. I assume your application includes a web.xml where you define a wicket filter / servlet, the RESTlet servlet and their mappings (at least). So you cannot get rid of the Servlet API (or of a servlet container, even if you embed it), but you can hide it as well as possible underneath your frameworks and into some main() method of your own. RESTlet (or Jersey or any JAX-RS implementation) as well as Spring MVC are all based on servlets, so the Servlet API does support REST pretty well, i'd say.

P.S. The two approaches do not exclude each other. You can very well work with Jetty during development and then deploy your war into some (non-embeded) container for QA / production. Or... stick with Jetty for production, if that really suits your needs.