Tomcat hosting

When a website is created, the domain name and the web hosting are the two main things which need to be taken care of. While getting the domain name is simple and easy, it is the webhosting that possesses a bigger challenge. Now, when a computer needs to be made to be running as the web server, it needs to have the web server software running, which delivers the web pages to the clients using protocols like Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over the World Wide Web. These software packages actually work like running a virtual machine or a computer which process the requests continuously and act as the web servers. There are many different software options to run the web servers like IIS, Jakarta Tomcat, Apache etc. which can simulate a web server.

Since not all of these are supported on all different platforms, it is important to decide which platform is being selected for the machine that will act as the web server and also install the corresponding web server software. One of the generic and supported web server solutions, which work on both Linux and Windows, is the Jakarta Tomcat software solution. Tomcat is basically a servlet hosting component, originally written by Sun Microsystems and later donated by them to Apache Software Foundation. The beauty of Tomcat is that it seamlessly integrates with both Apache httpd and Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) server, which makes it platform independent.

Tomcat hosting is mandatory if your website is using Tomcat framework in order to work. Literally there are hundreds of web hosting providers out there that claim that support Tomcat hosting. Unfortunately the truth is not always this. You have to browse the official forums in order to read other users experiences. You have to visit every Tomcat hosting provider and ask them critical questions that will reveal if they have knowledge about Tomcat hosting. You will be surprised how many so called specialized web hosting companies, that claim to offer Tomcat hosting services, don’t even know what the Tomcat platform is! You can imagine what kind of support they offer to Tomcat based websites when they don’t even know what Tomcat is…

Apache Tomcat is a very robust platform that is used by thousands of websites. It powers mainly heavy traffic websites, it is developed by Apache Software Foundation and is offered free of charge as it it remains an open source project (it is licensed under the Apache License version 2).

Let us first begin by knowing what exactly is a servlet and where does Tomcat fit. To start right at the beginning, there are 2 types of websites – static and dynamic. Static websites are those, which are simply html pages served over the network. They are very limited in terms of logic and user intractability. A little bit of dynamism that can be added to such static pages is through client side scripting languages such as JavaScript. These however, are limited in their capabilities. Dynamic web pages are those which are more intelligent. They “remember” users who return to the website. They allow users to customize their viewing options and remember a multitude of things for them. Such websites have a server which contains programs such that these programs are executed on the server and the results of these programs are displayed to the user. In most of the cases, and in all Java based websites, a servlet is used to provide this intelligence. A servlet is a basic Java class which resides on the server and allows the site to indulge in dynamic content. It is the logic which powers dynamism in a web site. Thus, it has 2 interaction streams - a request stream, where it tracks the user's choices and a response stream, where it responds back to the user. Closely related to a servlet is a Java Servlet Page, JSP, which is nothing but a combination of the static HTML pages and the dynamic Java code.

Given this basic knowledge, we are now in a position to understand Tomcat. Tomcat is the environment where these JSPs and Servlets can execute. Tomcat, is thus, a part of the web server, and it is the place where the programming logic of the dynamic website resides and executes. Along with providing the execution environment, Tomcat also provides programmers flexibility in terms of class loading and management, session management etc. Using Tomcat, the programmers can afford to focus only on the logic and forget about lower level administrative overheads. Tomcat provides a rich Application Programming Interface, API, which the developers liberally use during the development of the application.

A Java Developer Kit (JDK) is enough in order to start your journey in Tomcat. You can download one fore free from Oracle website.

Tomcat is an open source container and is freely available from the apache website as source code as well as in binary format. The installation is really very simple and it requires a Java JDK (Java Developer’s Kit) installation as a pre-requisite. The installation is slightly different on Windows and UNIX. Details of this can be found at the help pages on the official Tomcat site: http://tomcat.apache.org

In the current era where the machines have grown faster and faster, hosting only a single domain name from a web server may be considered as a waste of resources. As a result, there is a new concept called Virtual hosting. Virtual hosting is a way through which multiple domain names can be hosted on a single server via a single IP address and hence turns out to be more economical in the sense of utilization of resources. Tomcat allows for virtual hosting in a very simple and lucid manner. All it requires adding the <host> tag with proper name and directory path relative to the home directory in the server.xml file of the installation.

Owning to the above features, Tomcat is one of the most widely used and recommended product. In case you are planning to get yourself a web hosting service, check out whether they offer the Tomcat Hosting solution.