You may have noticed that CWCS virtual dedicated servers come with a host of functional software, including the most popular web server in the world – Apache. Tomcat is also available and can be installed on request – but what is Tomcat and why would you use it?

If you want to use JSP pages or servlets on your website, you must use a servlet container such as Tomcat because Apache does not support these. Servlets are Java technologies that extend the usefulness of web servers. They are platform and server independent – meaning that you can choose specific servlets to enhance the usability and functionality of your site. Servlets are generally thought of as one of the best ways of creating interactive web-based applications such as browsing online catalogues, and commerce enabling applications like shopping carts and checkouts. Many example servlets are freely available on the web – java.sun.com is a good place to start.

Apache is written in the C/C++ programming language, which makes it blindingly fast at doing what it does best – serving up web pages. Tomcat, on the other hand, is written in Java, interpreted at runtime, and therefore somewhat slower. The good news is you can link both servers together, so gaining the functionality of Tomcat to parse servlets and JSP pages, while retaining the speed of Apache when serving standard HTML and PHP pages.

CWCS web hosting will install Tomcat on your Virtual dedicated servers on request. Full functionality is achieved by the use of recommended operating systems and some additional software.