Apache Tomcat 4.0 Final Released

A reader writes "The latest version of the Apache Java Servlet engine has been released. 'The 4.0 release implements the Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 specifications.' Read more at The Apache Group's Jakarta site."

Comments

Tomcat looks good

[claes]

Tomcat is getting pretty good. Version 4 makes it very easy to deploy new webapps: it includes a web admin interface, and new apps can be deployed without restarting it. As a standalone webserver it is also fairly competent, at least for specialised applications with smaller user numbers.

Apache does some great things with Java. I have worked both with Tomcat (servlet container), Xerces (XML parser) and Xalan (XSLT engine). Thanks to the good work to come out from Apache, Java has become a very strong competitor to MS .NET. Actually I think it is ahead. In the future we will get the XML Binding API, that makes it possible to compile XML Schemas to java "xml manipulator" classes that can be used to manipulate XML instances of these schemas. XML parsing and manipulation will then be childs play. Define your schema, compile it and you have code that is specialised to work with these documents!

With a strong XML foundation in place, Java's future is looking really good.

Re:Tomcat looks good

[Wolfier]

No doubt. In order to be the ultimate platform of corporate choice, .N3T will guarantee backwards compatibility with all Outlook, Windows, DOS and CP/M viruses.

"We're doing this because our customers and the public ask for it. This way, our software can help them avoid hassles associated with incompatibilities among programs." An anonymous spokesbeing says.

very cool

[Dalroth]

I'm not completely up to speed on what Java Web development enhancements this brings to the table. However, I can honestly say that in my dealings with ßeta versions of Tomcat 4.0, the configuration files for Tomcat 4.0 are 1000x times easier and more sensible! The configuration files for Tomcat 3.x look like they were designed by a monkey on crack (or a Sendmail developer). Tomcat 4.0 config files are finally well thought out and usable. Can't wait to get my systems upgraded! :)

Hehe

[JediTrainer]

Anybody else appreciate the irony that 4.0 Final is released while 3.3 is still in beta?

I've been using Tomcat 3.2 in production for the last 6 months or so and it's been a wonderful servlet container. I can't wait to try out 4 in our testing environment!

Re:Hehe

[Dg93]

The 3.x and 4.x trees are completely different codebases... My understanding is that the 3.x tree will continue to get a certain amount of maintenance and development while the 4.x tree gets shaken out.

4.x has been in beta for a while, they've mainly been waiting for Sun to finalize the specs.

Re:Hehe

[JediTrainer]

The 3.x and 4.x trees are completely different codebases... My understanding is that the 3.x tree will continue to get a certain amount of maintenance
and development while the 4.x tree gets shaken out.

I know. Actually, 3.x was based on the Sun Java Server, whose source code was donated.

The irony is that it's taking longer for the 3.x line to get fixed properly than it is for the developers to have worked from scratch on a rewrite of the whole thing. There are quite a few things wrong with 3.2 which I won't get into (yes, we DO use it in production). I know that these things have been addressed in 4.0, while 3.3 is still working on it.

Very Mini howto...

[(H)elix1]

Download the file - lets say on a Win2K they have locked down at work. No admin rights? no problem... (Win2K assumptions here, though most OS's work about the same)

Make sure you have a JDK installed, like Sun's Windows version.

Unzip to a directory - taking the defaults sets you up in c:\jakarta-tomcat-4.0.

Go to the control pannel, click system, click advanced, click Environment Variables. Click new button on system variables and create a JAVA_HOME with a path to where you extracted your JDK. (My box has javac located in c:\jdk\bin, so my JAVA_HOME is c:\jdk). Create a TOMCAT_HOME as above pointing to c:\jakarta-tomcat-4.0.

Open up a command prompt, cd to c:\jakarta-tomcat-4.0\bin and run startup.bat.

Open a browser and type in http://localhost:8080, you should see it...

Happy hacking in the example code!

Re:Very Mini howto...

[hansk]

Create a TOMCAT_HOME as above pointing to c:\jakarta-tomcat-4.0

This should actually be CATALINA_HOME. The TOMCAT_HOME var was in the older versions.

The RUNNING.txt file included in the distributions contains the installation steps and, yes, they are very simple.

Hopefully it intalls easier...

[Teancom]

I wasted a week of my life trying to get tomcat 3.2.x up and going on a solaris machine. The documentation was the worst that I had *ever* run across, with "how-tos" sporadically jumping back and forth between version 3.1 and 3.3, with not one single "clear, concise, consistent" document available for 3.2 (the previously current stable version). Even step involved downloading another package from the jakarta project, trying to figure out *it's* documentation, installing it, testing, and then finally getting back to tomcat just to discover (generally buried in some obscure comment four pages into a mostly-irrelevant faq) that you need to go get something else.

Frankly, it wasn't until I got it going on a debian/x86 machine (apt-get install tomcat) that I was able to trace my way back and install it on solaris. Not that apache itself was much better, trying to get apxs working.

Then, after it was going, I tried to enable .jsp support in all my user's home directories, the same way we do with cgi's (this is intranet, and we have a lot of people running things out of their ~username). Can't be done. Absa-no-freaking way. Either you configure each directory individually, basically "giving" the /public_html/ dir to tomcat and bypassing apache completely, or you make everybody create a new directory and then configure them *individually*. If someone has a work around for this, I would *love* to hear it. Note the main problem is that tomcat doesn't understand the ~ syntax, so the url passed by apache when a .jsp page is requested is "foo.com/~user/baz.jsp", and then tomcat complains that ~user/baz.jsp doesn't exist. This is the #1 reason jsp/servlets aren't used more where I work.

So, I am *eager* to try out this release, and I truly hope that my complaints are now foundless. I would love nothing better than to be proven wrong, that the documentation has been completely overhauled, that it now understands the common ~username, that it works with any jdk besides blackdown's (on linux), and that it basically doesn't suck. But I'm not holding my breath.

J2EE-ish support? (for java CA)

[coyote-san]

I'm currently working on a certificate authority written with servlets (and JNI calls to libopenssl for the gory work of actually creating and signing the X.509 certs), and everything is using EJB beans. The goal is to have the CA entity beans handle the actual CA and X.509 tasks, another set of beans and JSP to handle the web and java client interfaces, and yet another set of beans to handle the business rules regarding content and issuance of the certs, and tying it all together with J2EE or something similar.

The only problem is that I seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle. For now, I'm creating and initializing the beans explicitly, but shouldn't this be handled automatically somewhere/somehow? I'm sure I'm just missing some small piece of information in this huge pile. Does this release address this problem, or is it an entirely different set of code?

(As a related aside, I'm gonna stop using Debian if it continues to have such long release cycles. I eventually got suitable openssl (0.9.6), postgres (7.0) and java (1.3) installed, but it took days and a lot of pain because of the length of the "to do A you must first do B, to do B you must first do C, to do... chain.)

Tomcat As the Anti.NET?

[Lethyos]

This project seems that it could fill the role of a great that that Sun wanted to accomplish with Java. The versatility of Servlets is quite extensive and it makes me wonder why, in the shadow of this project, the OSS community is spending time on dotGNU and Mono.

Tomcat has tremendous potential to deliver robust, complete apps in the same way .NET wants to. And, it's not restricted to Windows.

Is my thinking correct in that we can level this software against Microsoft's upcoming ventures? Can we make a .NET killer out of this, or am I thinking about driving a screw with a hammer?

Re:Tomcat As the Anti.NET?

[Lethyos]

Because Java still consistently sucks ass, drags ass, and is still up the ass of an almost-ran Microsoft (aka "Sun")?

Point by point here, how does Java suck? Java is a great language for all kinds of tasks. The extensive API already available for it is a big plus, and it is, for all intents and purposes, truly cross-platform.

Java is not as slow as most people claim. Like any programming language, performance is dependent largely on the programmer. A lot of programmers with poor skills use Java because they can focus on their tasks instead of building the tools to do said task. Here's an article on /. with more details about this. Also, pay attention to this article before yoiu make further claims that Java performance is bad. And of course, you could try actually coding something using the language. :P

Sun has done a lot of good for the OSS community. If you'll notice OpenOffice, and well, Java is a great piece of code for the Linux world. I'd say that Sun != Microsoft. Get a clue.

slightly offtopic, other jakarta stuff

[frknfrk]

also ant 1.4 was released recently (couple weeks ago). ant is a great build tool, i don't want to get into its features here (java and xml based build, replaces makefiles for my java builds, integrates with some IDEs and build verification/unit test tools (JUnit)). the reason i post here is because ant started out as a little tool with which tomcat developers build tomcat, and grew into its own tool. ant home page on jakarta.

Re:J-Run

[jefflinwood]

Yes, they're competitors in a way.

JRun is commercial, from Allaire/Macromedia. You can download it for free, though, at Allaire. They have several different versions to download. Professional and Enterprise are the full version of the product, but with a 30-day time limit. You'll need a license key. The difference between them is that Enterprise supports EJB, JTA, and JMS, which are Java API's for building complex applications on the server. Tomcat is like Professional in that it supports JSP and servlets, which are similar to PHP and CGI Perl for all you non-java slashdotters.

I actually don't have performance numbers for Tomcat 4.0 and JRun 3.1, since Catalina just got GA'd. If you can live without the support for JRun from Macromedia, and you want to save about a thousand bucks a server, give Tomcat a chance. You're probably not using EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) anyway, since they were only supported in JRun 3.x.

Re:Why use PHP?

[crisco]

• Because Java / JSP is just getting to the point of ease of use that PHP was a couple of years ago? In terms of strength as a language and a platform, JSP and Servlets have PHP beat. But the entry level is much higher, think of the arcane xml files to get your programs working in the directories you want. With PHP you just drop things in and they work, often easier than CGI. Consider how many people start, diving in and messing with code. Now imagine you wanna do that with a servlet? Not that it is difficult, it is just a little harder than with PHP.
• Because PHP / MySQL are standard at many cheap webhosts and with many Linux distros? And jsp / servlets aren't.
• The OSS community's mistrust of Java and Sun and anything related to them.
• Momentum and established codebase. Need a shopping cart, weblog, photogallery, or bulletin board? Head over to freshmeat and take your pick of PHP and Perl solutions. Want it in Java? Hmm, slim pickings...

Re:J-Run

[Tsujigiri]

And if you do need EJB support, give JBoss a look. It's open source and intergrates well with Tomcat to provide the EJB side of things.