Hosting Tomcat

Introduction

Tomcat is a web container using Apache as the Web server for hosting Java Servlets and Java Server Pages applications. To refer to the Web server, the term, Apache Tomcat, is generally used. Hosting Tomcat includes services such as storage space, server backups, file manager, and archive manager. You can also subscribe for additional features such as Email, Database services, and additional domains. Hosting Tomcat also includes hosting servlets and JSP applications, for which, Apache Tomcat is the most popular choice. Apache Tomcat 5.5 is the latest version of Apache Tomcat container and implements JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 specifications. Apache Tomcat is open source software.

Hosting Tomcat

While hosting Tomcat, you write your JSP and servlet code, create HTML pages, compile all this code, and deploy it on Tomcat, which then manages the deployed content. For hosting Tomcat on a computer, you need to have JRE preinstalled.

Hosting Tomcat can be done on a variety of platforms. Tomcat can be easily installed on Windows and Unix-based computers. On Windows, it is installed as a service and runs as daemon on Unix-based platforms. While adding a new application in hosting Tomcat, servlets are added in relevant directory path and corresponding changes done in configuration files of Tomcat.

The first step involved in hosting Tomcat is to verify if your server is up and running. After confirming that your server is up and running, configure the server for running servlets and JSPs. This includes creating a development directory, where servlets and JSP pages for your Web application will reside. Next, hosting Tomcat includes setting up the CLASSPATH. This is done to let the compiler know about the servlet classes. Next step in hosting Tomcat is to edit and configure the web.xml file. Web.xml defines the most important component of the Web application, that is, the servlet. In addition, web.xml also defines other elements representing resources, security constraints, filter, and session configuration, among several other elements. These elements together define all the information the Web server needs for hosting Tomcat.

Hosting Tomcat also involves setting up the main configuration file, server.xml, which forms the core of Tomcat. Server.xml defines the behaviour of the Web application on Tomcat. There are several elements in server.xml file such as Server, Service, Engine, Connector, Host, and Context. Server element defines the entire Tomcat container. The Service element describes a Tomcat service, which handles the incoming request. The Engine element specifies the Catalina engine, which is the heart of Tomcat - all the content stored in the Tomcat container is processed by Catalina engine. The Connector element manages the requests and responses by assigning a port for Tomcat. The Host element specifies the host under which the Web application will run. The Context application represents the Web application being run under a previously defined host. There can be a number of context elements under a host. The Context element specifies the URL of the Web application.

The final step in hosting Tomcat is compiling all the code and executing it to launch the Web application.

Configuring and hosting Tomcat is much easier on Linux as compared to Windows. This is because Tomcat is open source software, which also results in better performance of Apache Tomcat when compared to other Web servers. For example, as compared to IIS Web server, Apache Tomcat is faster, more secure, easier to use, and provides better scalability.