Chapter 1: Apache Tomcat probably want to jump
Chapter 1: Apache Tomcat probably want to jump straight ahead to Chapter 3 , although skimming this chapter and its successor is likely to add to your present understanding. The following topics are discussed in this chapter: . The origins of the Tomcat server . The terms of Tomcat s license and how it compares to other open source licenses . How Tomcat fits into the Java big picture . An overview of integrating Tomcat with Apache and other Web servers Humble Beginnings: The Apache Project One of the earliest Web servers was developed by Rob McCool at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This Web server was referred to colloquially as the NCSA project, or NCSA for short. By 1995, the NCSA server was quite popular, but its future was uncertain because the primary developer, McCool, had left NCSA the previous year. A group of developers got together and compiled all the NCSA bug fixes and enhancements they had found, and patched them into the NCSA code base. The developers released this new version in April 1995, and called it Apache, which was somewhat of an acronym for A PAtCHy Web Server. Apache was readily accepted by the developer community from its earliest days, and less than a year after its release, it unseated NCSA to become the most used Web server in the world (measured by the total number of servers running Apache), a distinction that it has held ever since (according to Apache s Web site). Incidentally, during the same period that Apache s use was spreading, NCSA s popularity was plummeting, and by 1999, NCSA was officially discontinued by its maintainers. For more information on the history of Apache and its developers, see http://httpd.apache.org/ ABOUT_APACHE.html . Today, the Apache Web server is available on just about any major operating system (in addition to the source code download, Apache binaries are available for over a dozen operating systems). Apache can be found running on some of the largest server farms in the world, as well as on some of the smallest devices (including several hand-held devices). In UNIX data centers, Apache is as ubiquitous as air conditioning and UPS systems. While Apache was originally a somewhat mangy collection of miscellaneous patches, today s versions are rock-solid production quality servers. The only real competitor to Apache in terms of market share and feature set is Microsoft s Internet Information Server (IIS), which is bundled free with certain versions of the Windows operating system. As of this writing, Apache s market share is estimated at around 60 percent, with IIS at 30 percent (statistics courtesy of http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_ server_survey.html). It is also worth noting that Apache has a reputation for being much more secure than Microsoft IIS. When new vulnerabilities are discovered in either server, the Apache developers fix Apache far faster than Microsoft fixes IIS.
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