The Apache Jakarta Tomcat 5 Servlet/JSP Container

Documentation Index

This is the top-level entry point of the documentation bundle for the Apache Jakarta Tomcat Servlet/JSP container. Tomcat version 5 implements the Servlet 2.4 and JavaServer Pages 2.0 specifications from the Java Community Process, 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, installing Tomcat 5, and using many of the Tomcat features.

1. Introduction - A brief, high level, overview of Tomcat.
2. Setup - How to install and run Tomcat on a variety of platforms.
3. First web application - 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).
4. Deployer - Operating the Tomcat Deployer to deploy, precompile, and validate web applications.
5. Manager - Operating the Manager web app to deploy, undeploy, and redeploy applications while Tomcat is running.
6. Realms and Access Control - Description of how to configure Realms (databases of users, passwords, and their associated roles) for use in web applications that utilize Container Managed Security.
7. Security Manager - Configuring and using a Java Security Manager to support fine-grained control over the behavior of your web applications.
8. JNDI Resources - Configuring standard and custom resources in the JNDI naming context that is provided to each web application.
9. JDBC DataSource - Configuring a JNDI DataSoure with a DB connection pool. Examples for many popular databases.
10. Classloading - Information about class loading in Tomcat 5, including where to place your application classes so that they are visible.
11. JSPs - Information about Jasper configuration, as well as the JSP compiler usage.
12. SSL - Installing and configuring SSL support so that your Tomcat will serve requests using the https protocol.
13. SSI - Using Server Side Includes in Tomcat.
14. CGI - Using CGIs with Tomcat.
15. Proxy Support - Configuring Tomcat 5 to run behind a proxy server (or a web server functioning as a proxy server).
16. MBean Descriptor - Configuring MBean descriptors files for custom components.
17. Default Servlet - Configuring the default servlet and customizing directory listings.
18. Tomcat Clustering - Enable session replication in a Tomcat environment.
19. Balancer - Configuring, using, and extending the load balancer application.

The following documents are aimed at System Administrators who are responsible for installing, configuring, and operating a Tomcat 5 server.

• Release notes - Known issues in this Tomcat release.
• Tomcat Server Configuration Reference - Reference manual that documents all available elements and attributes that may be placed into a Tomcat 5 conf/server.xml file.
• JK Documenation - Complete documentation and HOWTOs on the JK native webserver connector, used to interface Tomcat with servers like Apache HTTPd, IIS and others.
• Servlet API Javadocs - The Servlet 2.4 API Javadocs.
• JSP API Javadocs - The JSP 2.0 API Javadocs.

The following documents are for Java developers who wish to contribute to the development of the Tomcat project.

• Building from Source - Details the steps necessary to download Tomcat 5 source code (and the other packages that it depends on), and build a binary distribution from those sources.
• Changelog - Details the changes made to Tomcat.
• Status - Tomcat development status.
• Developers - List of active Tomcat contributors.
• Functional Specifications - Requirements specifications for features of the Catalina servlet container portion of Tomcat 5.
• Catalina Javadocs - Javadoc API documentation for the Catalina servlet container and its dependencies.
• Jasper Javadocs - Javadoc API documentation for the Jasper JSP container portion of Tomcat 5.
• Tomcat Architecture - Documentation of the Tomcat Server Architecture.