posted by dmikusa on January 23, 2012 03:14 PM

One of the new features with Tomcat 7 is a replacement to the commons-dbcp connection pool. While the commons-dbcp connection pool works fine for small or low traffic applications, it is known to have problems in highly concurrent environments (think multi-core/multi-cpu).

Fortunately, this is where the JDBC Connection Pool excels. It is a completely new connection pool which has been written from the ground up, with a focus on highly concurrent environments and performance.

Given its focus on high concurrency and performance, many users are finding that the JDBC Connection Pool can be great for use in a production environment. This article will discuss the features and options which make using the JDBC Connection Pool a great choice.

The Basics

Getting started with the JDBC Connection Pool is very simple. It was purposefully designed as a drop-in replacement for commons-dbcp and as such, if you've ever used commons-dbcp you'll be immediately familiar with the configuration for the JDBC Connection Pool.

This means the most existing commons-dbcp users can switch to the JDBC Connection Pool by simply adding the following property to their configuration factory=”org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory”.

What about the other commons-dbcp configuration options? You don't need to change them at all. Virtually all of the commons-dbcp configuration options are supported by the JDBC Connection Pool. Including but not limited to: testWhileIdle, testOnBorrow, testOnReturn, maxActive, minIdle, maxWait, initialSize, removeAbandoned, removeAbandonedTimeout and logAbandoned.

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posted by Stacey Schneider on January 23, 2012 10:47 AM

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 7.0.25

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This release includes numerous bug fixes and several new features compared to version 7.0.23. The notable new features include:

• Align the Servlet 3.0 implementation with the changes defined in the first maintenance release (also known as Rev. A.). See the JCP documentation for a detailed list of changes.
• Add support for connectors to automatically select a free port to bind to. This is useful when embedding and for testing.
• Update to Commons Pool 1.5.7, Commons Daemon 1.0.8 and Eclipse JDT compiler 3.7.1.

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posted by Stacey Schneider on January 4, 2012 07:31 AM

2011 has been a great year for the Tomcat Expert community. After almost 2 years of operating, the Tomcat Expert has hit its stride, unloading an array of new information, as well as keeping you up to date with the newest releases for Apache Tomcat 6 and Apache Tomcat 7. With the addition of two new Tomcat Expert Contributors, (Channing Benson and Daniel Mikusa), the Tomcat Expert community continues to build on its reputation for being the leading source for fresh perspectives and new information on how to best leverage Apache Tomcat in the enterprise.

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posted by chanthing on December 21, 2011 05:48 AM

1. Introduction

My last article for Tomcat Expert described various aspects of the Valve construct of Apache Tomcat: some basics about how to implement and configure a valve and an example of where things could go wrong if you were unaware of the operational details. For those of you who don’t remember (or didn’t read the article in the first place), the key takeaway was that because Tomcat valves are maintained as a chain, the order in which the valves are added to the configuration (typically in conf/server.xml) is significant, and the code that implements the filter must conclude with a call to invoke the next filter in the chain.

This time we’re going to lighten things up a bit with a general survey of what valves are available and how one might put them to use. Given the imminent arrival of the winter holiday season, one might think of it as the Apache Tomcat Valve Gift Catalog. Peruse it and find just the right gift for your favorite Tomcat administrator.

For each valve, I’ll describe its functionality, the most important configuration parameters, and point out any configuration subtleties that might not be apparent from the stock documentation. that can be found at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/valve.html. If there are any less well-known attributes or “secret” parameters associated with the valve, I’ll describe them.

2. Request Logging

2.1 Access Log Valve

The AccessLogValve can be configured at the context, host, or engine level and will log requests made to that container to a file. Attributes of AccessLogValve control the directory, the filename, and the format of the data to be written, including the ability to write information about headers (incoming and outgoing), cookies, and session or request attributes.

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posted by Stacey Schneider on December 6, 2011 12:09 PM

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 6.0.35 stable.

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Apache Tomcat 6.0.35 is primarily a security and bug fix release. All users of older versions of the Tomcat 6.0 family should upgrade to 6.0.35.

Note that is version has 4 zip binaries: a generic one and three bundled with Tomcat native binaries for different CPU architectures.

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posted by Stacey Schneider on November 27, 2011 12:08 PM

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 7.0.23

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This release includes numerous bug fixes and several new features compared to version 7.0.22. The notable new features include:

• The ability to start and stop child containers (primarily Contexts: i.e. web applications) in parallel which can significantly improve start times. This is disabled by default but can be enabled by setting the startStopThreads attribute of a Host to a value greater than one.
• Cache the results of parsing the global and host level context.xml files to improve start times.
• Improve the handling of failed deployments so that a broken application can be fixed (e.g. via JMX) and another attempt made to start it rather than it having to be removed.

Please refer to the change log for the complete list of changes:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/changelog.html

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posted by dmikusa on November 22, 2011 09:13 AM

This article is the second in a series discussing how to performance tune the JVM to better run Apache Tomcat. In the first article, we discussed the basic basic goals and how to monitor the performance of your JVM.

If you have not read the first article, I would strongly suggest reading that before continuing with this article. It is important to understand and follow the processes outlined in that article when performance tuning. They will both save you time and prevent you getting into trouble. With that, let's continue.

Tuning the JVM

At this point we've covered the basics and are ready to begin examining the JVM options that are available to us. Please note that while these options can be used for any application running on the JVM, this article will focus sole only how they can be applied to Tomcat. The usage of these options for other applications may or may not be appropriate.

Note: For simplicity, it is assumed that you are running an Oracle Hotspot JVM.

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