Tomcat 5 Unleashed [Paperback]

Lajos Moczar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0672326361 | ISBN-13: 978-0672326363 | Edition: 1

Getting the most bang for their buck is a goal for every company, large or small. That is why open-source technologies are becoming so popular. However, organizations are often wary of the scalability, security and stability that open-source technologies offer. Tomcat Unleashed is a comprehensive guide that will show you how Tomcat 5.x can meet these expectations and more. Detailed, hands-on coverage of Tomcat 5.x will teach you how to deploy it at an enterprise level, as well as integrate it with other components, including databases, LDAP and web application frameworks. Get the most bang for your buck with Tomcat Unleashed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lajos Moczar has worked with open source software since 1995. Through his business, Galatea IS Inc., he provides training and consulting services to companies around the world. His first book, The Cocoon Developer's Handbook, was published in 2002 by Sams Publishing. In addition to his writings on Tomcat and Cocoon, Lajos maintains his well-known FlashGuides at his site, http://www.galatea.com. When he is not writing books, he develops and sells Az, an integrated bundling of Apache and Tomcat. And when he is not writing software, he pursues his chief occupation of enjoying life in the Rockies with his wife and children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

My primary interest in open source software (OSS) is in building enterprise information systems using open source components. The maturity of OSS makes this not only possible but easily achievable on many levels. In the early days of OSS, you might find occasional pockets of OSS usage in organizations; zealots who pushed the bleeding edge by running rogue Web servers on Apache with JServer or Java Web Server. These days, the sometimes furtive activities of such individuals has given way to a broader understanding that OSS is not only an enticing business choice but a sound technological one as well.

When I first started using products such as Apache, MySQL, Apache JServer, Sun's Java Web Server, and the first versions of Tomcat, it was in situations where we were all starting out getting our feet wet with OSS and trying to convince upper management that we had a revolution in the making. Now we are seeing major shifts in government and corporate enterprises toward OSS. We have a plethora of options in the OSS world—products to match nearly every facet of computing and with more being invented each day. In fact, if anything, the very multitude of options adds another layer of complexity in creating OSS-based enterprises.

What I stress with my clients is that if you want to build your enterprise around open source products, you must approach OSS with an "enterprise" mindset. That is, you must select, configure and run open source products with the same attention to stability, security, and interoperability that you would demand of commercial products. We're talking about running enterprises here, not standalone Web servers; the demands on OSS are now greater and we must pay more attention to how we use OSS than whether we use it or not. This is the key to success with OSS: If you use it right, if you can surround it with a framework that ensures a stable and secure operating environment for your enterprise applications, you will achieve the promise of OSS.

It is with this approach that I have used Tomcat for many years and now come to write about it. Tomcat is a fine piece of software, and does its job as a servlet container extremely well. What I want to show in this book is how to use Tomcat in a production, enterprise environment. You'll see the factors that go into using Tomcat as a critical part of an open source J2EE environment, as well as a key component in the enterprise. We'll get the chance to hook up Tomcat with databases, OpenLDAP, OpenEJB, and authentication mechanisms such as Kerberos. Along the way, you'll hear me talk over and over again about the things I think are most important: having a stable, well documented, secure and thoroughly tested Tomcat installation.

In the end, the point is simple: Tomcat, like any other piece of information technology, is a tool to support your business. Like a physical tool, you have to understand its operation, how to use it right, and how to take care of it. Surrounded as we are by technology, it is easy to forget that it still comes down to supporting the business. With the tools supplied by a solid enterprise, an organization can do its work more effectively and efficiently. And that is what I hope you get from this book: how to use Tomcat to realize the goals of your business.

In Part 1 of this book, we'll get started by downloading Tomcat and doing basic configuration, security, and administration. Here we'll take the first steps in creating a production-quality Tomcat installation.

Part 2 will cover Web application development. After a J2EE introduction, I'll talk about how to create a robust development environment for Web applications that uses Ant and CVS. With that in place, we'll move on to developing with servlets, JSPs (using JSP 2.0 and JSTL), filters, listeners, XSLT, JNDI, JTA, and log4j.

Tomcat administration is the subject of Part 3, where I'll start with a chapter on Tomcat internals so that you have a good grasp of what goes on behind the scenes. After that comes chapters on administration and configuration basics, I'll cover such topics as Web server integration, load balancing, clustering, and advanced authentication mechanisms using Kerberos and JAAS.

The last part of the book will deal with some more advanced areas of Tomcat, including Tomcat customization, EJB server integration and using embedded Tomcat.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (August 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672326361
• ISBN-13: 978-0672326363
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,434,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very limited use, July 6, 2005

By 

Mr Cool (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomcat 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

This book should be about Tomcat 5 with some supporting examples that are related to configuring and running Tomcat. It is not the case here. There are pages and pages of complete JSP implementations, quite detailed explanation about implementing MVC controller for example, JAAS (good thing but more useful for EJB's; I'd rather read something about JDBC authentication that is used in servlets, but there is none about it here), or a lot of other approaches to JSP and servlets (with full code spanning several pages). Great thing. But what about Tomcat? Oh, yeah, and .... "you run all these great things with Tomcat". That's pretty much it. This is a book about JSP development and not even a bit about Tomcat. I already know JSP and the reason Im buying this book because I need to know about.....Tomcat! The book should also cover Tomcat 5.5. Not a word inside about 5.5 (hardly anything about 5.0!) So, do not waste money on this book. Get APRES's Pro Jakarta Tomcat 5 by Matthew Moodie if you wanna know anything about Tomcat 5.0 AND 5.5 (both covered with examples given for both, and some JSP code ONLY to help you understand how Tomcat works!)

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars shows how to implement a framework for a web app, October 4, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tomcat 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

If you program Java servlets and JSPs, chances are good that you are using Tomcat. It provides a very well debugged container for your applications. Here, Moczar walks you through version 5, the very latest.

He takes a lot of the mystery about what J2EE is, if you decide to use Tomcat to hold J2EE applications. He illustrates with a very common 3 tier architecture - client, middle and back tiers. Most crucially, with the middle tier being subdivided into a presentation layer, controller, business logic and a lowest layer that talks to the back tier. A lot of the book essentially fleshes out how Tomcat acts as a container to hold that middle tier. Plus, within that tier, how JSPs and servlets can be used to make each layer. Of course, there are many details. But if you keep the overall framework clear in your mind, then you should have no problem following his narrative.

The last part of the book is more suited for Tomcat sysadmins. Programmers usually will not need much material from this section.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too heavy at beginning to be useful, October 18, 2006

By 

Christopher V. Kimball - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tomcat 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

After a useful chapter 1 "Quickstart", the text plunges quickly into mind-boggling complexity, including lengthy initial "Security basics", philosophic "Overview of JEE application development", "Web application principles", "Web application design", and a do-it-my-way "Setting up a development environment" chapters. Do we have to have Ant and MySQL installation at the start? Finally, chapters 9 and 10 are helpful for those who either persevered or skipped ahead.

Publishers should require better writing skills from their authors and "cut-the-crap".