I have been working with Geoserver and ArcGIS Server but I am still not sure what make these geospatial server handle the spatial data transfer compared to the normal server, like apache & jetty, on which these are installed?
What is that factor that makes Geoserver and ArcServers to be spatially enabled?
Best Answer
Calling ArcGIS Server and GeoServer 'servers' is a misnomer / marketing technique. GeoServer, for instance, uses Jetty and optionally Apache, etc.
What these are, are applications - like hosted versions of GIS applications but with more emphasis on being able to store data and provide it as APIs - whether tiled images representing the data, the data in different formats, or a way to modify the data in spatial ways.