2.3.2  Tomcat Servlet Engine and Web Server 

Web applications today are based on the ability of the server to generate flexible, dynamic 

content. Several technologies are available that address dynamic content generation  

Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology (ASP), Java Server Pages and Servlets, or PHP are 

examples to name but a few. 

 Tomcat is the Servlet and Java Server Pages reference implementation  (quote from the 

Tomcat Web site 

http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/

). To explain this statement further: While the 

Servlet and Java Server Pages technologies are owned by Sun, the development of an engine 

actually using these technologies has been put under the responsibility of the Jakarta Apache 

Project. Jakarta is the home of several Open Source projects that all have Java as the common 

platform. Tomcat is one of these projects. 

In addition to being a Servlet and JSP Engine, Tomcat can also be used as a Web server. This 

is especially useful during development for testing, when performance is not a critical issue. For 

deployment, however, it is recommended to use Tomcat in conjunction with a more stable and 

faster Web server, such as Apache. 

The latest version of Tomcat can be downloaded at the Internet address given above. On line 

documentation covers installation on Windows or Linux, as well as other topics such as Apache 

Tomcat Web server integration, or application development under Tomcat. Some of these topics 

are covered later on in this document. 

2.3.3  Enhydra Application Server 

2.3.3.1  Introduction to Enhydra 

Enhydra provides a development environment for creating Web applications, being the Open 

Source alternative to commercial software products that typically cost several thousand or up to 

tens of thousands of dollars per CPU (e.g. WebSphere by IBM, iPlanet Application Server by 

Sun). Enhydra is available for free download at 

http://enhydra.org

, or as a packaged version 

including hard copy documentation and support for about $700 (development license) or $1000 

(deployment license) from Lutris Technologies, Inc. 

A major downside of Enhydra has been its lack of support for the Java 2 Enterprise Edition. This 

problem is currently being addressed: A beta version of Enhydra Enterprise has recently 

become available (end of March 2001). Enhydra Enterprise will fully support J2EE. 

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