Software that provides services to access the Internet, an intranet, or an extranet. A Web server hosts Web sites, provides support for HTTP and other protocols, and executes server-side programs (such as CGI scripts or servlets) that perform certain functions. In the J2EE architecture, a Web server provides services to a Web container. For example, a Web container typically relies on a Web server to provide HTTP message handling. The J2EE architecture assumes that a Web container is hosted by a Web server from the same vendor, so it does not specify the contract between these two entities. A Web server can host one or more Web containers.

The basic package for SOAP messaging, SAAJ contains the API for creating and populating a SOAP message.

Simple Object Access Protocol. A lightweight protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It defines, using XML technologies, an extensible messaging framework containing a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols.

A messaging system built on the concept of message queues. Each message is addressed to a specific queue; clients extract messages from the queues established to hold their messages.

An enterprise bean that is an asynchronous message consumer. A message-driven bean has no state for a specific client, but its instance variables can contain state across the handling of client messages, including an open database connection and an object reference to an EJB object. A client accesses a message-driven bean by sending messages to the destination for which the bean is a message listener.