Jakarta Tomcat is not only the most commonly used open source servlet engine today, it's become the de facto standard by which other servlet engines are measured. Powerful and flexible, it can be used as a stand-alone web server or in conjunction with another server, like Apache or IIS, to run servlets or JSPs. But mastery of Tomcat is not easy: because it's as complex as it is complete. Tomcat: The Definitive Guide answers vexing questions that users, administrators, and developers alike have been asking. This concise guide provides much needed information to help harness Tomcat's power and wealth of features. Tomcat: The Definitive Guide offers something for everyone who uses Tomcat. System and network administrators will find detailed instructions on installation, configuration, and maintenance. For users, it supplies insightful information on how to deploy Tomcat. And seasoned enterprise Java developers will have a complete reference to setting up, running, and using this powerful software The book begins with an introduction to the Tomcat server and includes an overview of the three types of server configurations: stand-alone, in-process, and out-of-process. The authors show how directories are laid out, cover the initial setup, and describe how to set the environment variables and modify the configuration files, concluding with common errors, problems, and solutions. In subsequent chapters, they cover:

• The server.xml configuration file
• Java Security manager
• Authentication schemes and Tomcat users
• The Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
• Tomcat JDBC Realms
• Installing servlets and Java Server Pages
• Integrating Tomcat with Apache
• Advanced Tomcat configuration

and much more. Tomcat: The Definitive Guide covers all major platforms, including Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X, contains details on Tomcat configuration files, and has a quick-start guide to get developers up and running with Java servlets and JavaServer Pages. If you've struggled with this powerful yet demanding technology in the past, this book will provide the answers you need.

Rating:

Rating:

Rating:

Tomcat: The Definitive Guide Review,  November 25 2003
Submitted by Mike Greene from the Columbia Java Users Group   [Respond | View]

In short, this book provides comprehensive instructions for almost anyone wanting to deploy the TOMCAT Server. This book is a good starting place for programmers or admins who expect to quickly understand basic concepts.

Chapter-by-chapter the book presents new concepts accompanied by examples and descriptions for installing, configuring, and some debugging of the servlet engine. While the book tends to be Unix-centric, information for other Operating Environments is provided. Each successive chapter tends to expand on the previous chapter increasing the reader’s knowledge along the way. It adequately serves as an introduction to Tomcat but it is also a good book to keep around as a technical administrative reference.

The book provides specific information on Tomcat interfaces and components through a “user guide” type format. For example, information is presented for Tomcat’s setup, configuration files, environment variables, servlets and JSP’s, JDBC, SSL and much more. What this book is not is a programmer guide but is a good how-to for programmers wanting to administer the server. Examples are provided for using and running Tomcat as a stand-alone web server.

In summary, this book is a success in explaining the relatively technical concepts of Tomcat and also provides very useful and relevant information about Tomcat features.




Tomcat: The Definitive Guide Review,  September 17 2003
Submitted by Serge Libotte   [Respond | View]

Why a developper should read this book?

I'm reading the book for administration purprose but as a developper I'm learning very exciting things anyway.

To get an idea, the read this : https://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/06/25/tomcat_tips.html


Tomcat: The Definitive Guide Review,  August 02 2003
Submitted by Tim McGuire   [Respond | View]

Until I bought this book I had an agreement with Tomcat. Tomcat would serve my servlets like it was supposed to and I wouldn't try to pull any stunts. If I ran into something that wasn't working because of some setting or another in Tomcat, I avoided it. Now that I have this book, the agreement is off. This book is chock full of neat and useful tricks with some excellent examples. The book is very well written in true O'Reilly style (They even found a way to use the word "laconic" which I have never seen used in a computer book before). It illuminated various things I was unaware of, such as:

• How to run the web based Tomcat admin application
  
  
• Tomcat restart issues - this was especially interesting and gets to the heart of what java and tomcat really are.
  
  
• How to enable Tomcat's SSI servlet so that it will use your existing server-side includes.
  
  

The book has lots of hints of the " I know how to do this in Apache httpd, but how do I do it in Tomcat ?" variety. This is in addition to an entire chapter devoted to connecting Tomcat to Apache httpd.

The subject of a java web server will automatically bleed over into the subjects of Java and Unix and the book does a great job exposing the timid to Unix and Java concepts that help in understanding these technologies. For example, the book gives detailed instructions for setting up a chroot jail on a Unix type system.

I read the chapter on security several times because it is really foundational. It gets at the excellent security abilities of Java and explains them better than I have seen them explained elsewhere. It also gives the basics of possible vulnerabilities of any web application. The stuff in this section applies broadly to any Servlet container, but has a lot of specifics for Tomcat.

Obviously, most of the stuff in the book is available from the Java, Unix, or Tomcat documentation, but the book acts as a guide, pointing out key things in the documentation.

The only limitation of the book that I could tell was that the authors are exclusively from a Unix background. This has the result of making the book slanted towards Linux/Unix. There are a couple of things that the authors show how to do on Unix but leave the impression that there is no way to do it on Windows. For example they say, "On Unix type operating systems, run netstat from the command line to see the open ports." You can do this on Windows as well. They also give a Unix shell script that organizes log files so that they look like Apache httpd log files. It would have been nice to offer one for windows as well or at least give a hint for how to do so. A lot of people use Tomcat on windows as a development environment and they should not be ignored.

In summary, the book succeeds in both broad concepts that deal with running any java web server and in exposing the finer details of Tomcat in particular. Another reviewer asked if this was really "Vital Information for Tomcat Programmers and Administrators" as the subtitle says. I would say yes. You get details of programming Tomcat through the configuration files and crucial details for how Tomcat settings affects how your servlets behave. Perhaps they are asking about messing around with the source code of Tomcat? Then no, it is not about programming Tomcat in that sense.

Reviewed by Tim McGuire




Tomcat: The Definitive Guide Review,  July 18 2003
Submitted by karthik   [Respond | View]

well, I just perused the book yesterday at the book shop. The impression i got was that even though it claims that the book is for "Programmers", it looks more geared towards sys admins. Not sure if am right. Would you (authors) recommend this book for java "developers"? Does tomcat have apis that developers can use? / do we write web applications as we normally do? ( as per sun servlet / jsp spec). There were no sample java code snippets anywhere.

If possible please tell us how a developer w'd benefit from this book.

thanks!

See larger cover