JavaExp: Java and Open Source Technology

A Web server exclusively handles HTTP requests, whereas an application server serves business logic to application programs through any number of protocols. Web server's delegation model is fairly simple. When a request comes into the Web server, the Web server simply passes the request to the program best able to handle it. The Web server doesn't provide any functionality beyond simply providing an environment in which the server-side program can execute and pass back the generated responses. The server-side program usually provides for itself such functions as transaction processing, database connectivity, and messaging. A Web server handles the HTTP protocol. When the Web server receives an HTTP request, it responds with an HTTP response, such as sending back an HTML page. To process a request, a Web server may respond with a static HTML page or image, send a redirect, or delegate the dynamic response generation to some other program such as CGI scrip...

Serialization is the process of persisting the state of an object. Lets say for example you create a dog object and instantiate all its various members, size, age, height etc. Serialization allows you to 'save' this object persisting all its state. Its kind of like saving anything, this can then be restored at a later date and the object reused. To make a class suitable for serialization the class needs to implement the Serializable interface. Serializable is a marker interface, it doesnot have any methods defined.