Tomcat to run a twitter stream monitoring app?

Question

I'm a newbie when it comes to Java for web application stuff, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.

I'm building an app that uses the Twitter Streaming API and Jtwitter to listen for various tweets, do some database record-keeping, and send out some tweeted replies. The application has no web component, although there will be a web application (probably .net, maybe grails) for interacting with the recorded data.

Right now my application is in development and runs on Glassfish included Eclipse, but when I deploy it I'm not sure how to approach it. I was thinking of using Tomcat to auto-load the application as a servlet, but since there's really no web component to this end of it I'm not sure this is the best approach.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

As long as the volume is fairly low, the difference between Tomcat and a Java SE command-line app is basically the Servlet API. If something more advanced than a simple start/stop button is required on the administrative side I'd go for Tomcat with a bundled admin console.