Chapter 11: Tomcat Web Container Configuration

Overview

Web containers are one of the more popular components of J2EE because they host the user interface for the interaction between the user and the entire application. It is the part of a server that gains the user’s attention since it controls an application’s visual components. Not surprisingly, it also claims the largest developer base.

Because of this, developers and organization place a large degree of their resources on the Web container and often utilize a Web container’s specific extensions and application programming interfaces (APIs). This leads developers and companies to prefer a particular type or implementation of Web container.

The Geronimo developers understood this and included two of the most popular Open Source Web containers in its distribution: Jetty and Tomcat. This offering allows users the choice to work with the container that they are most comfortable with. More importantly, this also allows easy migration to Geronimo for Web applications that may have specific code for a particular container.

In this chapter, you will:

• Learn about the Tomcat Web container and its configuration in Geronimo

• Learn how to set up and use Tomcat

• Learn how to configure and use the Tomcat extensions in Web applications

Let’s begin by learning a bit about enabling and using Tomcat in Geronimo.