The Tomcat 4 Servlet/JSP Container

Documentation Index

This is the top-level entry point of the documentation bundle for the Tomcat 4 Servlet/JSP container. Tomcat 4 implements the Servlet 2.3 and JavaServer Pages 1.2 specifications from Java Software, and includes many additional features that make it a useful platform for developing and deploying web applications and web services.

Select one of the links from the navigation menu (to the left) to drill down to the more detailed documenation that is available. Each available manual is described in more detail below.

The following documents will assist you in downloading and installing Tomcat 4, and (if you wish to) building a distribution from the source code.

• Introduction - A brief, high level, overview of Tomcat.
• README.txt - Describes the contents and directory structure of a Tomcat 4 binary distribution.
• RUNNING.txt - Documents the steps necessary to download, install, start, and stop a Tomcat 4 server.
• BUILDING.txt - Details the steps necessary to download Tomcat 4 source code (and the other packages that it depends on), and build a binary distribution from those sources.
• Server Configuration Reference - Reference manual that documents all available elements and attributes that may be placed into a Tomcat 4 conf/server.xml file.

The following documents are aimed at System Administrators who are responsible for installing, configuring, and operating a Tomcat 4 server.

• CGI HOW-TO - Configuring Tomcat to use CGI (Common Gateway Interface).
• Connectors List - List of the connectors (both HTTP and native webservers) available for use with Tomcat.
• Class Loader HOW-TO - Information about class loading in Tomcat 4, including where to place your application classes so that they are visible.
• HTML Manager App HOW-TO - Operating the HTML Manager web app to deploy, undeploy, and redeploy applications while Tomcat is running.
• JNDI DataSource HOW-TO - Configuring a JNDI DataSoure with a dB connection pool. Examples for many popular databases.
• JK Documenation - Complete documentation and HOWTOs on the JK native webserver connector, used to interface Tomcat with servers like Apache HTTPd, IIS and others.
• JNDI Resources HOW-TO - Configuring standard and custom resources in the JNDI naming context that is provided to each web application.
• JSP Engine Config HOW-TO - The Jasper 2 JSP Engine. How it works and how to configure it.
• Manager App HOW-TO - Operating the Manager web app to deploy, undeploy, and redeploy applications while Tomcat is running.
• MBean Descriptor HOW-TO - Configuring MBean descriptors files for custom components.
• Proxy Support HOW-TO - Configuring Tomcat 4 to run behind a proxy server (or a web server functioning as a proxy server).
• Realm Configuration HOW-TO - Description of how to configure Realms (databases of users, passwords, and their associated roles) for use in web applications that utilize Container Managed Security (FIXME - hyperlink to background info on this).
• Security Manager HOW-TO - Configuring and using a Java Security Manager to support fine-grained control over the behavior of your web applications.
• SSI HOW-TO - Configuring Tomcat to use SSI (Server Side Include).
• SSL Configuration HOW-TO - Installing and configuring SSL support so that your Tomcat will serve requests using the https protocol.

The following documents are aimed at Application Developers who are constructing web applications or web services that will run on Tomcat.

• Application Developer's Guide - An introduction to the concepts of a web application as defined in the Servlet 2.3 Specification. Covers basic organization of your web application source tree, the structure of a web application archive, and an introduction to the web application deployment descriptor (/WEB-INF/web.xml).
• Servlet/JSP Javadocs - The Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 API Javadocs.

The following documents are for Java developers who wish to contribute to the development of the Catalina servlet container portion of Tomcat itself, or to better understand its internal architecture and operation.

• Functional Specifications - Requirements specifications for features of the Catalina servlet container portion of Tomcat 4.
• Javadocs - Javadoc API documentation for the Catalina servlet container portion of Tomcat 4.

The following documents are for Java developers who wish to contribute to the development of the Jasper JSP container portion of Tomcat itself, or to better understand its internal architecture and operation.

• Javadocs - Javadoc API documentation for the Jasper JSP container portion of Tomcat 4.