Administration Basics
In This Chapter
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Running Tomcat 5
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Tomcat 5 Resources
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Installing MySQL
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Creating the Database Connection Pool
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Running Tomcat 4
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Tomcat 4 Resources
Defining Tomcat administration is a bit nebulous. As with many enterprise applications, administration means anything from starting and stopping to managing related resources that Tomcat depends on. I'm going to start by defining some of the things that might be part of Tomcat administration for you. Some are obvious; others really depend on your situation. In the last chapter, I already talked about one of them, configuration. In this chapter, we're going to start by looking at some of the ways to run Tomcat. Then, we'll spend the bulk of the time discussing Tomcat resources and configuring it to create a database connection pool, which we'll use in a new Java Server Page (JSP) that displays a list of Tomcat resources stored in a database. In the next chapter, I'll continue to expand the discussion of administration by dealing with security.
Introduction
Table 3.1 lists some of the things that, in my experience, fall into the purview of Tomcat administration. Again, not all might apply to you. Then again, there might be things you do that I don't mention.
Table 3.1 Tomcat Administration Tasks
Task |
Notes |
Installation/upgrade |
Obvious, although part of this task implies some kind of acceptance testing for new versions prior to upgrade. We started this task in Chapter 1, "Tomcat Quickstart," but we'll expand on it in Chapter 17, "Administering Tomcat." |
Running |
Includes starting, stopping, and autostarting Tomcat. Covered here a bit in this chapter, but mostly in Chapter 17. |
Basic configuration |
I like to consider the setup or basic configuration of a Tomcat installation its own task, although it is usually lumped in with the installation task. Part of this task is what I called productionalizing the distribution, which we started in the last chapter. |
Application administration |
This task covers deployment, upgrade, and general ongoing maintenance of the application hosted by your Tomcat installation. |
Monitoring |
Covers error, load, and resource monitoring. Don't deploy without it! |
Resource administration |
A broad topic because it deals with the configuration of the resources required by Tomcat or its applications. This area might be as simple as configuring Tomcat to access these resources, as with an existing database, or as complex as installing, configuring, and setting up those resources as well. |
Security |
This task might be a narrow or broad task. If you have an existing security plan and infrastructure, it might be easy to integrate Tomcat into it. If you do not, this task might entail at least the basic development of such an infrastructure. |
Web server integration |
Most production Tomcat installations front Tomcat with a Web server like Apache or Internet Information Services (IIS). This I cover in Chapter 20, "TomcatWeb Server Integration." |
Now let's talk about running Tomcat.