The Liberty profile is a lightweight, and very quick, application server. Coupled with the associated free developer tools, the Liberty profile provides a convenient application development environment for your web and OSGi applications.
The Liberty profile is extremely lightweight, easy to install, and very fast to use. It therefore provides a convenient and capable platform for developing and testing your web and OSGi applications. This is especially true if you are developing applications to run on IBM® WebSphere® Application Server, because any application that runs on the Liberty profile will also run on the full profile server.
For application development, you might want to install the Liberty profile on its own, either by using the Installation Manager or by downloading an executable JAR file from the WASdev community download page.