Difference between JAR and WAR deployment based on performance

Question

What are the major differences between a web application deployed as a JAR versus it deployed on an application server as a WAR?

My case is that, I have developed a REST service using Spring Boot and that is packaged as a JAR file. The service may have to handle 500-1000 requests at the same time and I'm working on improving the performance of the service.

From a performance perspective, is it better to install an application server and deploy the application as a WAR rather than just execute the JAR as a standalone process?

Would the application server like Tomcat give more control related to number of configurable threads as compared to its JAR counterpart?

Answer 1

The question is a bit incorrect, as JAR and WAR are simply a packaging format.

SpringBoot uses Tomcat as an embedded server by default, so there won't be a difference between running Tomcat as application server and deploying your application as WAR, or simply running a JAR.

What really matters is your code. If you plan to serve 1000rps, I would highly advice looking at Spring Reactor (as you already use Spring) or Vert.x, to provide as much concurrency as possible.