As most O'Reilly books, this *was* an outstanding, readable, and indispensable guide for Tomcat development and administration. Unfortunately, it's sadly outdated: this book only covers version 4, while versions 5, 5.5, and 6 introduce many, many innovations and changes, and you don't want to waste time reading material that doesn't apply to the current versions. It is unfortunate that this book is still being for sale. This book has well deserved stars, but those starts are now obsolete. We all Tomcat lovers are looking forward for an updated edition.

'Tomcat: The Definitive Guide' is a great resource for all Tomcat programmers and administrators. Jam packed with 450 pages of material over 11 chapters, you will learn everything you need to know. Security, configuration, performance tuning, integration with Apache and building Tomcat from the source, this is a wonderful guide that should be on every Tomcat admin's desk.

**** RECOMMENDED

Jason Brittain and Ian F. Darwin's TOMCAT: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE, 2ND EDITION has been updated for the latest version of Tomcat and offers a complete guide to installing the servlet container, from basics of installation to using web applications, securing Tomcat from online intruders, troubleshooting and customizing the program. Any advanced computer collection strong in Java programming needs this.

All of these other reviews, including some of the popular spotlights, seem to be about the first edition with quite a few people saying they were disappointed. I never read the first edition, so I can't remark on its content. However, this second edition seems to have all the details you need to get up and running, and Tomcat is not an area of my expertise.

In many cases Tomcat is a good choice for a web server, and it is well suited as a high performance production web server. It is also a free and open source servlet and JSP engine. You can use it by itself or with other web servers such as Apache httpd. The book is a user's guide for Tomcat, not a tutorial on how to write web applications. That misunderstanding might have had some readers disappointed. Thus, you don't need to be a programmer to understand the book - it is targeted more at system administrators. The following is a run down of the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Tomcat - explains how to install Tomcat, get it running, and test it to make sure that it's functioning properly.
Section 1.1. Installing Tomcat
Section 1.2. Starting, Stopping, and Restarting Tomcat
Section 1.3. Automatic Startup
Section 1.4. Testing Your Tomcat Installation
Section 1.5. Where Did Tomcat Come From?

Chapter 2. Configuring Tomcat - shows the various places to look for information about your server, how to find out why things aren't working, and gives you some examples of common mistakes in setting up and configuring Tomcat.
Section 2.1. A Word About Using the Apache Web Server
Section 2.2. Relocating the Web Applications Directory
Section 2.3. Changing the Port Number from 8080
Section 2.4. Java VM Configuration
Section 2.5. Changing the JSP Compiler
Section 2.6. Managing Realms, Roles, and Users
Section 2.7. Controlling Sessions
Section 2.8. Accessing JNDI and JDBC Resources
Section 2.9. Servlet Auto-Reloading
Section 2.10. Customized User Directories
Section 2.11. Tomcat Example Applications
Section 2.12. Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
Section 2.13. The Tomcat Admin Webapp

Chapter 3. Deploying Servlet and JSP Web Applications in Tomcat - shows web applications composed of servlets, JSPs, and other files, and several approaches for deploying them. It ends with a discussion of the Manager web application, which can handle some deployment operations for you.
Section 3.1. Hosts
Section 3.2. Layout of a Web Application
Section 3.3. Deploying an Unpacked Webapp Directory
Section 3.4. Deploying a WAR File
Section 3.5. Hot Deployment
Section 3.6. Working with WAR Files
Section 3.7. The Manager Webapp
Section 3.8. Automation with Apache Ant
Section 3.9. Symbolic Links

Chapter 4. Tomcat Performance Tuning - some ideas on performance tuning the underlying Java runtime and the Tomcat server itself so that you service requests more efficiently.
Section 4.1. Measuring Web Server Performance
Section 4.2. External Tuning
Section 4.3. Internal Tuning
Section 4.4. Capacity Planning
Section 4.5. Additional Resources

Chapter 5. Integration with the Apache Web Server - covers the use of Tomcat with Apache httpd and talks about the several ways of making Tomcat thrive in front of or behind an Apache httpd installation.
Section 5.1. The Pros and Cons of Integration
Section 5.2. Installing Apache httpd
Section 5.3. Apache Integration with Tomcat
Section 5.4. Tomcat Serving HTTP over the APR Connector

Chapter 6. Tomcat Security - details about what security is and how to improve it in your Tomcat installation.
Section 6.1. Securing the System
Section 6.2. Multiple Server Security Models
Section 6.3. Using the SecurityManager
Section 6.4. Granting File Permissions
Section 6.5. Setting Up a Tomcat chroot Jail
Section 6.6. Filtering Bad User Input
Section 6.7. Securing Tomcat with SSL

Chapter 7. Configuration - Using realms this chapter shows how to set up an example JDBC domain to talk to a relational database. Realms are lists of users authorized to implement specific sections of your web site. Many of the other configuration changes you can make are discussed too.
Section 7.1. server.xml
Section 7.2. web.xml
Section 7.3. tomcat-users.xml
Section 7.4. catalina.policy
Section 7.5. catalina.properties
Section 7.6. context.xml

Chapter 8. Debugging and Troubleshooting - Ways to look for information that helps discover why things aren't working and gives examples of mistakes that are commonly made but may not be obvious. Also discusses why Tomcat may not shut down gracefully and what to do about this common problem, as well as ways of preventing abnormal shutdowns from recurring.
Section 8.1. Reading Logfiles
Section 8.2. Hunting for Errors
Section 8.3. URLs and the HTTP Conversation
Section 8.4. Debugging with RequestDumperValve
Section 8.5. When Tomcat Won't Shut Down

Chapter 9. Building Tomcat from Source - How to compile your own Tomcat in case you don't want to run a prebuilt binary release of it. Gives step-by-step instructions on how to install the Apache Ant build tool, download all necessary support libraries, and build your Tomcat.
Section 9.1. Installing Apache Ant
Section 9.2. Obtaining the Source
Section 9.3. Downloading Support Libraries
Section 9.4. Building Tomcat

Chapter 10. Tomcat Clustering - Some options for running multiple Tomcat servlet containers in parallel for both fault tolerance and higher scalability, while discussing the pros and cons of various clustering approaches.
Section 10.1. Clustering Terms
Section 10.2. The Communication Sequence of an HTTP Request
Section 10.3. Distributed Java Servlet Containers
Section 10.4. Tomcat 6 Clustering Implementation
Section 10.5. JDBC Request Distribution and Failover
Section 10.6. Additional Resources

Chapter 11. Final Words - Overview of the Tomcat open source project's community resources, including docs, mailing lists, and other web sites.
Section 11.1. Supplemental Resources
Section 11.2. Community

Appendix A. Installing Java
Section A.1. Choosing a Java JDK
Section A.2. Working Around Older GCJ and Kaffe JVMs
Section A.3. Sun Microsystems Java SE JDK
Section A.4. IBM J9 JDK
Section A.5. BEA JRockit JDK
Section A.6. Apple Java SE JDK
Section A.7. Excelsior JET
Section A.8. Apache Harmony JDK

Appendix B. jbchroot.c
Appendix C. BadInputValve.java
Appendix D. BadInputFilter.java
Appendix E. RPM Package Files

This book is hopelessly incomplete. I'm always having to augment it's contents with on-line information. I just attempted to determine the difference between "path" and "docBase" in the "Context" tag in the server.xml file but again it struck out. All page 175 says is that "context" configures the web application directory within a host. End of story. I strongly suggest that you look to another source for Tomcat.

Chap 3: Deploying servlet and JSP Web Applications in Tomcat.
Writing a book about a servlet container whose app deployment methods have most users puzzeled is a challenge. I dont think this book does any better than the online docs (which are bad).

Chap 4: Tomcat performance tuning.
Capacity planning, now thats one area where my knowledge general and tomcatwise is a little thin - the chapter only list the topics but provide no hints or answers. Could have been interesting but wasted my time.

Chap 6: Tomcat security.
Locking down with java policy file, unix chroot and bsd chroot, request filter - wellwritten and very usefull.

Chap 7: Config files and their elements:
Hmm a new way to run the server on lower 1024 ports without root user - why present this now and not in chap 6? A few details from previous chapters repeated - dont the authors two talk together?

Chap 8: Debugging and troubleshooting:
Only the obvious things - too thin.

All in all i found the chapter on security and clustering usefull but the book as a hole seems to lack a clear structure/vision and some chapters dosent do more for me than the lousy online docs. Configuring tomcat is not easy and this book dosent help much. Never the less i like working with tomcat! :)

Chap 3: Deploying servlet and JSP Web Applications in Tomcat.
Writing a book about a servlet container whose app deployment methods have most users puzzeled is a challenge. I dont think this book does any better than the online docs (which are bad).

Chap 4: Tomcat performance tuning.
Capacity planning, now thats one area where my knowledge general and tomcatwise is a little thin - the chapter only list the topics but provide no hints or answers. Could have been interesting but wasted my time.

Chap 6: Tomcat security.
Locking down with java policy file, unix chroot and bsd chroot, request filter - wellwritten and very usefull.

Chap 7: Config files and their elements:
Hmm a new way to run the server on lower 1024 ports without root user - why present this now and not in chap 6? A few details from previous chapters repeated - dont the authors two talk together?

Chap 8: Debugging and troubleshooting:
Only the obvious things - too thin.

All in all i found the chapter on security and clustering usefull but the book as a hole seems to lack a clear structure/vision and some chapters dosent do more for me than the lousy online docs. Configuring tomcat is not easy and this book dosent help much. Never the less i like working with tomcat! :)