I have an application that I am about to split into a client and a server portion. Can I use an applicaiton server or something to power the server side? I am wondering what the benefits of an application server are?
Can I use an application server without using EJB?
Yes, you can have an App Server without an EJB Container. For instance, in JBoss you can remove the EJB Container and just use it with Tomcat, or some of the other MBean services.
What is the technology of your "server-side" code? Is it a Java EE or Java J2EE technology like Servlets or EJBs?