Application server, why?

My manager wants me to know why we should have an application server in our web app. Currently, our web app talks directly to SQL Server.

What are some of the pros and cons of having an application server (generally speaking)

--SY

Larry Menard
If your talking about a physical server then there is a lot of advantage. Like Pete said, if you seperare the Application from the Database (2 server) hacker will not have direct access to the database and you can setup the hardware appropriately for the task. Also, if you have multiple server wit hyour application, you can redirect trafic to the computer with the lowest amount of hits and if one crash, the other ones will take over. You can read stuff on Web Farm or Cluster Server.
joeller

Hi!

Thanks for asking! I'm a member of the ASP.NET team, and was just popping over here to see what was going on. The best place to ask ASP.NET questions is over on the ASP.NET forums at http://www.asp.net/welcome.aspx tabindex=1&tabid=39

The short answer to your question is that application servers allow you to create an abstraction layer from your data, protecting it from people going straight into the database and screwing around with things. It also makes it easier for developing future applications as you can just code against the application layer, instead of having to re-code the application layer and the UI layer.

HTH,

PEte
ja123ee
I'm having a hard time figuring what or why you want it. For a Windows Application it would be good to have all the data centered at one place. But a web application is already centered at one place, unless you have multiple site (app) fetching the same data.
Application server, why?