Professional Apache Tomcat (Programmer to Programmer)

Post Internet era has seen developments in web middleware. Application Servers quickly started Filling the gap. Tomcat is an application server built around the Java technology. It is a JSP and servlet container that can be attached to other popular web servers like Apache and IIS. It can act as a stand-alone web server as well.

The JSP technology allows web developers to create dynamic web pages using XML-type tags or embedded Java. Servlets are components written in Java that can be invoked by servers.

This book will provide the readers a complete discussion about Tomcat, its installation, configuration, use, and methods for securing it. This book goes a step further by providing discussion on issues like load balancing, shared hosting, load testing, and a lot more. In addition, readers will find a coverage on database connectivity using Tomcat. Tomcat is an open source web server that processes JavaServer Pages and Java Servlets. It can run as a stand-alone server or be integrated with Apache. Like Apache, the core Tomcat program is relatively simple, but there are many enhancements that can be added that make it much more complex.

You will learn how to integrate Tomcat with the Apache HTTP server (and the situations when you should and you shouldn't), how to set up database connectivity through JDBC, and how to ensure your web applications are secure.

It will also cover some of the tools that can be integrated with Tomcat, such as Ant (for automatically building web applications) and Log4J (for advanced logging).

What does this book cover?

- Tomcat 3.x, Tomcat 4.0.x, and Tomcat 4.1.x

- The Tomcat architecture

- Tomcat installation and configuration

- Apache and Tomcat integration using the AJP and WARP connectors

- Tomcat security with SSL, realms, and the Java Security Manager

- Shared Tomcat hosting, server load testing, and load balancing

- Managing and administering web applications

- JDBC with Tomcat

- Ant and Log4j

This book will provide you, the server administrator, with the necessary knowledge to install and configure Tomcat, as well as many of the most popular enhancements to the Tomcat package. It will help you plan the installation and possible growth options of your site.

Sing Li has grown up with the Microprocessor and the Internet revolution. For two decades, Sing has been an active author, consultant, instructor, entrepreneur, and speaker. His wide-ranging experience spans distributed architectures, web services, multi-tiered server systems, computer telephony, universal messaging, and embedded systems. Sing has been credited with writing the very first article on the Internet Global Phone, delivering voice over IP long before it became a common reality. Sing has participated in several Wrox projects in the past, has been working with (and writing about) Java, Jini, and JXTA since their very first available releases, and is an active evangelist for the unlimited potential of P2P technology.

Before graduating from High School, Ben Galbraith was hired by a major Silicon Valley computer manufacturer to develop Windows-based Client-server applications with international deployments and hundreds of users. In 1995, Mr. Galbraith began developing for the web and fell in love with Unix, vi, and Perl. After building countless web applications with Perl, Ben discovered server-side Java in 1999 and his relationship with Perl has since become somewhat estranged. Mr. Galbraith is presently a consultant in Provo, Utah. He regularly lectures, evangelizes, and gives classes on Java technology. Ben has no college degree but if he had the time he would study both ancient and modern history.

Vivek Chopra has eight years of experience in software design and development, the last two years of which have been in web services and various XML technologies. He is the co-author of Professional ebXML Foundations and Professional XML Web Services (both from Wrox Press). He is also a committer for UDDI4J, an open source Java API for UDDI. His other areas of experience and interest include compilers, middleware, clustering, GNU/Linux, and mobile computing. He is currently consulting in the domain area of web services. Vivek holds a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and a Master's in Computer Science, both from Pune University, India.

Debashish Bhattacharjee is a principal consultant with the Management Consulting Services unit of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He has 10 years of experience implementing projects for Fortune 500 clients in the United States and Canada. His areas of expertise are systems integration and project management. He has served as chief architect and led technical teams tasked with the implementation of e-commerce applications, portal implementations, web infrastructure, ERP, and client-server applications. In his role as consultant, Debashish is often responsible for advising clients on best practices and the adoption of technology. He is the published author of several industry articles.

Sandip Bhattacharya is an open source enthusiast and an active participant in various Open Source communities in India, especially his local LUG -Indian Linux Users Group, Delhi(ILUGD). He has been programming right from his school days in 1991, and some minor distractions like an engineering degree in Textile technology and an MBA in marketing notwithstanding, has remained true to the field. He has been professionally involved in open source based technologies for the past three years. He is currently a freelance programmer and consults businesses on ways to use the open source revolution to their advantage.

Chad Fowler is CTO of GE Appliances' Bangalore, India. For the past four years, he has been an active advocate of open source Java technologies in the enterprise, revolving around the Enhydra suite of software. Driven into software development by a less-than-healthy addiction to the video game "Doom", he dropped his professional music career and never looked back. His current interests focus on the Ruby programming language, learning the Hindi (spoken/written--not programming) language, and Agile Software Development methodologies.