What is a Web Container

After developing Servlet Application we need to deploy and run our application at theWeb-Server. When a Web-server starts it internally starts a web-container which is also termed as servlet container. 

What is a web-container ?

A web-container is nothing but a simple java program which is used to delegate the incoming request from the browser to the respective Servlet Object running inside a web-container. 

Originally a request from the client machine(web browser) comes to the web-server which is capable of handling static pages request and for generating dynamic page a Servlet Object is responsible which runs inside a web-container , so after receiving the request by the web-server it forwards to the web-container and then from a web-container to the respective Servlet Object for dynamic page generation and finally to the clients machine as a display to the web browser. 

                              ( Diagram showing how request follows from client to web-container)

What is the use of web container?
It is used to delegate the incoming request to the servlet object running inside the web-container to process the request and generate the dynamic content.

What are the limitations with the Web-Server?
Web-server is only capable of forwarding the static page only in response to the client machine. For processing the the request and generating the dynamic page we need to have a web-container inside a web-server.

How the Servlet instance created and what happened at the container start up. To know about the thing happens at the container start-up click here..!!