Chapter 1. Getting Started with Tomcat
Because Tomcat is written in Java, some people assume that you have to be a Java guru to use it. That is not so! Although you need to know Java to modify the internals of Tomcat or to write your own servlet programs, you do not need to know any Java to use Tomcat or to write or maintain many JavaServer Pages (JSPs). You can have JSPs that use "JavaBeans" or "JSP Custom Tags"; in both cases, you are simply using Java components that a developer has set up for you.
In this chapter, we explain how to install Tomcat, get it running, and test it to make sure that it's functioning properly.
Tip
As of this writing, there are several production-ready versions of Tomcat available, but we strongly suggest you use the latest stable version of the 6.0 branch or whichever is the latest stable version of Tomcat by the time you read this. See the Apache Tomcat home page (http://tomcat.apache.org) to find the latest stable version. For Tomcat versions 5.5 and 6.0, this book provides an abundance of answers and explanations about the general concepts of how Tomcat works, in addition to showing rich detail about how to use these popular versions of Tomcat.
Installing Tomcat
There are several paths to getting Tomcat up and running. The quickest one is to download and run the compiled binary. Tomcat is written in Java, which means you need to have a modern and complete Java runtime installed before you can build or test it. Read Appendix A to make sure you have Java ...
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