Professional Apache Tomcat 6 (WROX Professional Guides) [Paperback]

Vivek Chopra (Author), Sing Li (Author), Jeff Genender (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 2007 | Series: WROX Professional Guides

• Tomcat is the official reference implementation of Sun's servlet and JSP specifications, and Java developers must test all Web applications on Tomcat to ensure they work as designed
• Boasting more than 40 percent new and updated material, this book covers all the major new features affecting server administration and management
• Explores the additional built-in tools of Tomcat, which help Java developers program more efficiently, and looks at how Apache's other open source servlet/JSP technologies are designed to work with Tomcat
• Features full coverage of Release 6, which supports the latest JSP and servlet specifications: JSP 2.1 and Servlets 2.5
• Addresses solving real-world problems encountered during all phases of server administration, including managing class loaders and connectors, security, shared hosting and clustering, and system testing

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

With this comprehensive resource, you'll uncover the ins-and-outs of installing, configuring, and running the Apache Tomcat server. This book not only provides a line-by-line analysis of configuration options, but also explores the features and capabilities of Tomcat. You'll then gain the skills to solve the type of problems that arise during all phases of system administration, including shared hosting, security, system testing, and performance testing and tuning.

Focusing exclusively on Tomcat 6, the book takes you through all of the latest architectural and performance changes. You'll progress from basic Tomcat and web application configuration to more advanced techniques for clustering, JDBC connectivity, logging, and much more. All of this will help you effectively manage and administer your Tomcat deployment.

What you will learn from this book

• How to install the JVM and Tomcat on Windows and Unix/Linux systems

• Steps for packaging and deploying web applications

• Configuring Tomcat's internal HTTP protocol stack, including the new APR and NIO Connectors

• Deploying Tomcat with the Apache Web server or Microsoft IIS as the front-end Web servers

• Load balancing and clustering a farm of Tomcat servers

• Ways to install Tomcat in virtual hosting situations

• How to load test web applications deployed in Tomcat

• Monitoring Tomcat servers in real-time by tapping into internally maintained statistics

• Techniques for providing scalability and high availability to web applications

• Performance tips and best practices for Tomcat 6

Who this book is for

This book is for J2EE system administrators and Java developers who are responsible for Tomcat configuration, performance tuning, system security, or deployment architecture.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Vivek Chopra has more than 13 years of experience as a software architect, developer, and team lead and has worked in a number of Silicon Valley companies and startups. He writes actively on technology and is the author of more than half a dozen books on Java, open source software, XML, and Web services. Vivek has pending patents on Web service technologies, and has been a Java Community Process (JCP) member for the past three years. He also serves on the expert group for JSR 280 (XML API for Java ME).

Sing Li (who was bitten by the microcomputer bug in the late 1970s) has grown up with the Microprocessor Age. His first personal computer was a $99 do-it-yourself Netronics COSMIC ELF with 256 bytes of memory, mail-ordered from the back pages of Popular Electronics magazine. A 20-year industry veteran, Sing is a system developer, open source software contributor, and freelance writer specializing in Java technology, and embedded and distributed systems architecture. He regularly writes for several popular technical journals and e-zines, and is the creator of the “Internet Global Phone,” one of the very first Internet phones available. He has authored and co-authored a number of books across diverse technical disciplines including Geronimo, Tomcat, JSP, servlets, XML, Jini, media streaming, device drivers, and JXTA.

Jeff Genender has over 18 years of software architecture, team lead, and development experience in multiple industries. Jeff is an active committer and Project Management Committee (PMC) member for Apache Geronimo, and a committer on OpenTerracotta, OpenEJB, ServiceMix, and Mojo (Maven plugins). Jeff also serves as a member of the Java Community Process (JCP) expert group for JSR-313 (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 6 [Java EE 6] Specification) as a representative of the Apache Software Foundation. Jeff is an open source evangelist and has successfully brought open source development efforts, initiatives, and success stories into a number of Global 2000 companies, saving these organizations millions in licensing costs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (August 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471753610
• ISBN-13: 978-0471753612
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what I ordered!, January 8, 2008

By 

David O'Meara "CodeRanch Sheriff" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Apache Tomcat 6 (WROX Professional Guides) (Paperback)

I was really impressed with this book and felt like it had been written with my requirements in mind. The other Tomcat books I have read felt like they were paraphrasing the online help; additional material was provided, but little of it was new. While reading the first few chapters of this book, several of my ongoing queries had been answered, and there were a bunch of other gems as well - it sorted out my AJP and APR queries, gave options for running Tomcat on privileged ports without running as root, and dug further into the server.xml configuration than I

Professional Apache Tomcat 6 (WROX Professional Guides) is aimed at the serious Tomcat user. It will be useful to people that do serious tinkering at home, but it is a an absolute bible if you have Tomcat running production code or other critical uses.

Personally I found that the level of information did not always provide 100% coverage but, for example, the level of detail provided covering server.xml, web.xml and context.xml configuration will be of great use. The descriptions go into plenty of detail but rarely goes overboard. Examples of places to hook into or extend the existing functionality are pointed out, but the authors don't get distracted in providing sample implementations when the defaults are sufficient. The information is full of the sort professional advice and directions that I would expect from a book of this name, and that has been sadly missing from the other offerings I have seen.

As a short description, it covers topics like AJP connectors, Apache Portable Runtime libraries, configuring Tomcat behind IIS or Apache servers, clustering, shared hosting, oodles of configuration options, and also takes two chapters to look at testing the performance and then tuning applications running Tomcat.

If I had to provide negative comments, I would say that the book was written by three authors and at times it doesn't mesh well and it is clear that one section had a different author to another. There were also a couple of areas that didn't have the coverage I had hoped, but in most cases an explanation was given as to why this was done.

Realistically I find it difficult to fault this book and look forward to migrating our own servers to Tomcat 6 and tweaking the behaviour using the information provided. With this book in hand I feel completely confident that I have the know-how to set up the environment correctly.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, April 28, 2010

By 

Mark A. Espinoza "Java Dev" (Yuma AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional Apache Tomcat 6 (WROX Professional Guides) (Paperback)

Don't know of another book that gives this much detail, especially on virtual hosting. This was the reason I bought it.
My site is up and running on one VPS, one tomcat one IP, and 2 domains. Awesome. Did I mention I am using GoDaddy? They
gave me an awesome deal. My only concern was getting everything set up. Other hosts charge for the tomcat setup. A good
deal if you are willing to nut up and set it up yourself. Get this book!

I highly recommend this book to anyone trying the same.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am please with this book, December 13, 2009

By 

Robert D. Glover Jr. "robert-g-near-nyc" (Linden, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional Apache Tomcat 6 (WROX Professional Guides) (Paperback)

I first bought the O'Reilly book on Tomcat 6, but as is often the case in my experience the O'Reilly books it was too wordy and too difficult to find trees among the forests. So, I next bought this Wrox book on Tomcat 6 and am very pleased with it so far. I feel I am really learning about Tomcat and Tomcat architecture from the Wrox book, and that it will be possible to actually apply what I'm learning from the book in the real jworld. My needs are to know how to set up jndi and jdbc for Tomcat in Eclipse, especially when using the m2Eclipse maven plugin with a multi-module pom structure (i.e. parent pom and several child pom) setup. Of course this Wrox book can't address such a specific need, but it so far is doing an excellent job of giving me enough understanding of Tomcat that I can figure out for myself how to do this. Knowing what I know now, I would buy this Wrox book again; conversely, I would not buy the O'Reilly book on Tomcat again.