Wednesday, March 23, 2011

tomcat: Another way to connect IIS and Tomcat

If you were working with tomcat and IIS for a while you know things are getting a little long in the tooth. The last principle update to how IIS and Tomcat interact was made in early 2000. In the meantime many changes have occured to IIS and Tomcat with more capabilities added.
So, I thought it would be time to also update the way IIS and Tomcat connect.
I just published a project on RIAForge whose goal is to modernize this part:

Lastest Release Available on Github.

Online Documentation is regularly updated.

Here are some reasons to consider a new connector:
• no ISAPI code
• no IIS6 vestiges or backward compatibility elements needed on IIS7
• all managed code using the modern extensibility framework
• works on IIS6 and IIS7
• speed improvements
• easier control by file type on IIS side
• no virtual directories and virtual mapping needed
• configuration can be inherited to sub-sites and virtual sites
• easy install/uninstall
• support partial stream sending to browser (automatic flushing) with faster response to client
• support both 32/64 bit of Windows with same process and files
• transfer of all request headers to servlet container
• build in simple-security for web-administration pages

Happy experimenting,
B.