Is Apache Tomcat built on Apache Web Server platform?

Question

Recently our Software Analytic provider (NETTRACKER) sent us a plugin in order to be able to capture visitors in a better way. This plugin is for Apache 1.x and Apache 2.x. They said and I quote

that since Apache Tomcat is built on Apache HTTP server the configuration of the plugin should be the same.

I have looked for a httpd.conf in our tomcat deployment but we cannot find one, the only configuration that is similar to that one is the server.xml under the /conf directory.

If someone has better information regarding these two incredible products (Apache HTTP server and Apache Tomcat) I will greatly appreciate to draw the differences.

EDIT: In case you are curious we know that Apache Web Server and Tomcat can work together using the mod_jk option and other proxys. But this will be too complex for our deployment.

Answer 1

Apache Tomcat and Apache HTTP are completely different server technologies. It is impossible to use a plugin for Apache HTTP server with Tomcat.

Apache HTTP server is developed in C and so are the plug-ins. On the contrary Tomcat is now completely developed in Java. Tomcat doesn't only serve static content, but it can also serve JSP pages and servlets.

Tomcat is used for hosting Java Web Applications. It can sure serve static content - you can host a web application using only Tomcat. Secure connections are supported and the performance is also very good (comparable with the performance of HTTP server).

A plain installation of Apache serves static content. Using the appropriate plug-ins, HTTP requests can be redirected to an application server (Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish) or a script language interpreter (PHP). With this way dynamic content can be generated. The big advantages of Apache are the numerous plug-ins available, which allows administrators to configure and monitor web sites any way they want and that is the most widespread server available. This makes it the most secure solution, since it is thoroughly tested and any discovered flaw is corrected very quickly.

The best solution would be to use Tomcat proxied by an Apache server. It isn't so difficult to set up. If you can't do this, then you can't take advantage of Apache's plug-ins.