What is the difference between selenium standalone server and Java selenium jar files

This may sound like a stupid question, but I want to know the difference between selenium stand-alone server and Java selenium jar file? I can import the webdriver class using two jar files If the selenium standalone server provides all the necessary jar files, why do we have a separate Java selenium jar file

Solution

Selenium standalone server – is a Java jar file used to start the selenium server. Just like the server, it acts as a proxy for the selenium grid for the browser you want to automate

There are several reasons for the server:

>Test distribution through remote machines or multiple machines (nodes), > Test on different browsers of different versions, > test developed using java binding (i.e. python, c# or Ruby), and want to use htmlunit driver 4

Selenium client (jar) – in a word, a client and a bunch of APIs are integrated into a jar for different languages (ruby, phyton, c#, JavaScript, etc.). Therefore, if you want to automate locally and test on the browser, its version does not want to run in parallel, which is what you need

Client jar can also be obtained through Maven or gradle, open source build automation system and other tools

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.appium/java-client -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.appium</groupId>
    <artifactId>java-client</artifactId>
    <version>6.0.0-BETA5</version>
</dependency>