What are the differences between 'Selenium-server-standalone.jar' and 'Selenium Client & WebDriver'?

Question

What are the Implementations differences between 'Selenium-server-standalone.jar' and 'Selenium Client & WebDriver'. Following is the link from SeleniumHQ.org website [http://www.seleniumhq.org/download/]

1. http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/2.44/selenium-server-standalone-2.44.0.jar
2. "http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/2.44/selenium-java-2.44.0.zip"

I know the first one is Formerly known as Selenium RC and the second one is Selenium 2.0(Webdriver). But Is the latest version supporting all the jars in Webdriver in Selenium Server. I have only Selenium Server available, Did all the methods in Selenium Webdriver support in Selenium Server? likewise, what are the differences between the jars in it?

Could anyone provide suggestions?

Thanks

Answer 1

Selenium server standalone jar is a library that provides you the classes of Selenium automation framework.

Just for additional info, selenium-standalone-server.jar is a bundled jar that contains both API and selenium server.

Selenium server is required to run older selenium RC tests or to run WebDriver tests in remote machines through selenium Grid.

 

Selenium webdriver is a software framework for the web which is used to carry out automation testing of various web-applications against various browsers. This also enables you to use a programming language in creating your test scripts.

In Selenium WebDriver, there is no need for Selenium Server JAR for performing local tests. Only for remote tests using Grid, it is needed.