What is difference between HTTPS and TCP over SSL

Question

I am working on a DotNet client application which will send message to Java server over HTTPS. Prior to this one of my team member has developed a application which uses tcp client with ssl to communicate with server. Kindly help me that if I use his exising code than what are the changes I need to do for Https communication in Dot Net.

Answer 1

"TCP over SSL" is not what you have -- it's SSL that "runs" over TCP. In HTTPS case you have HTTP over SSL over TCP. HTTP is an application-level protocol here. In case of just "SSL over TCP" you have custom application-level protocol, and with HTTPS you have standard HTTP.

Consequently you can reuse parts of the existing code but you need to replace the custom protocol (whatever it is) with HTTP. If the existing protocol works, there's not much sense in replacing it (unless you know that you need a replacement and you know what for you need it).