Via both Mike Herrick and Patrick Logan comes this link to a post by Erik Onnen on Apache HTTPD:
If RESTful architectures catch on and people start to see the web as a series of resources, Apache HTTPD’s role will continue to grow. It’s high time we stopped looking at Apache HTTPD as just a web server and started viewing it as an HTTP Gateway.
The Apache web server is not exactly famous for its small footprint (both in terms of configuration and runtime), but I agree it’s a very viable option for many scenarios.
Stefan said:
Yea but httpd is super tiny compared to anything commonly labeled “hub” or “bus” or anything typically considered “middleware” in the Enterprise. I’ve seen EAI / service bus stuff that could fit all of httpd in the palm of its hand.
That’s what I find so interesting about the enterprise Java market — the least complex solutions are often orders of magnitude more complex than the software people in UNIX hacker land consider large and bloated.