Astonishing Tomcat Connector Status
There are a lot of questions on IIS.net forums about running Tomcat Connector on IIS. Sounds like in many cases such configuration will fail.
I am not a Tomcat user, so it is not easy to check on the details, but just found this horrible notice published on Apache site under Supported Configuration section,
The IIS-Tomcat redirector was developed and tested on:
- WinNT4.0-i386 SP4/SP5/SP6a (should be able to work with other service packs), Win2K and WinXP and Win98
- IIS4.0 and PWS4.0 (numerous people have working IIS 5 and IIS 6 configurations)
- Tomcat 3.2 and later, Tomcat 4.x, Tomcat 5 and 5.5 and Tomcat 6
The redirector uses ajp12 and ajp13 to send requests to the Tomcat containers. There is also an option to use Tomcat in process, more about the in-process mode can be found in the in process howto.
Wow, that sounds like an echo from almost 8 or more years ago. Hope those guys can utilize latest IIS versions (IIS 6, 7, 7.5) and upgrade the connector wherever necessary.
Note
I fully understand what “numerous people have working IIS 5 and IIS 6 configurations” does mean, but if I treat it as an answer to “numerous people have problems with IIS 5 and IIS 6 configurations”, I find it horrible.
The user experience for this open source module (or the whole project) can be harmed in this way, as there is no hint that the module becomes obsolete. Therefore, testing it on latest IIS versions is necessary if not mandatory.
And this also reflects a not-so-well habit for some open source consumers. Why not check at least the supported platforms for an open source project before trying it out? A simple check can save you a lot of time and prevent a lot of frustration.
(Updated: )
Actually for IIS 7 users, you can now use ARR from Microsoft to replace the out-of-date Tomcat Connector. Its information can be found here,