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About Java Servlets

Java Servlet technology is a Java standard for developing HTTP web server applications. The Java Servlet API has been called a "better-CGI-than-CGI", because servlets replace server-side programs that in the past would have been CGI scripts written in a language such as Perl. Servlets have a significant performance advantage relative to CGI, because a servlet is created and loaded once by a web server, while CGI scripts are restarted on every web page access.

Java Servlet programmers developing web applications gain the advantages of programming in a feature-rich object oriented language. Servlets naturally leverage other Java technologies such as Java Beans, and interface with middleware protocols, including Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and CORBA.

The servlet API is supported across a range of web servers (JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere, IPlanet, Apache, IIS, and others) and operating systems (Unix, Linux, NT, and others). For more information about servlets, visit the Sun Microsystems Java Servlets web pages.