Jan K. Labanowski: "Tomcat, servlets, JSPs and other friends"

Application Server - Continues

The typical log of events looks like:

  • Web server receives the request for dynamic content from the Web browser.
  • Request is reorganized and packaged in a specific format (one required by the communication protocol) and given to the connector module of Web server.
  • Connector module sends the request to Application server and waits for the response.
  • Connector module receives response from the Application server and passes it back to Web server.
  • Web server resturns the response to Web browser which originated the request

This is exactly how Tomcat behaves when it works in combo with the traditional Apache Web server. Apache has a connector module (mod_jk) which forwards requests for servlets and JSP to Tomcat. Tomcat runs them, and returns results to Apache, and Apache returns them to Web Browser. Check my write-ups on: http://www.ccl.net/cca/software/UNIX/apache.