GeoServer Layer Diagram
The GeoServer Project - the open Internet gateway for geographic data
The GeoServer Project is a Java (J2EE) implementation of:
GeoServer is free software, available under the GPL 2.0 license.
Users who would like to access and modify their geographic data over the Internet using flexible, industry-approved standards should take a look at GeoServer.
GeoServer is constructed using a Layered Design as outlined in the diagram below. There are two Layer systems in use - the classic J2EE Servlet/Handler/Request/Response and the STRUTS Framework.
As seen in the above Layer Diagram GeoServer makes use of the wonderful GeoTools2 library to provide data access. GeoServer maintains its own geotools.jar available in the lib directory. This jar is often more recent then the latest GeoTools public beta.
Many GeoServer classes implement GeoTools2 interfaces inorder to facilitate reuse and intergration with subsystems such as validation.