Slapping Together A JSP Development Environment (
Page 1 of 7 )
Deploying a JSP development environment on your workstation can
test even the strongest of wills, since it requires the peaceful
co-existence and cooperation of a number of complex software packages. This
tutorial guides you through the process of getting Apache, JServ and Tomcat
configured, alerts you to some of the problems you're likely to encounter,
and briefly discusses Tomcat contexts and JSP-mySQL connections. Covers
both Windows and Linux.You know you're getting old when it takes you a day to configure
software...especially when bright-eyed kids half your age accomplish the same
thing in two hours flat.
This was the thought that crossed my mind when I
recently decided to set up my machine for JSP (Java Server Pages) development. I
got myself set up, made sure there was plenty of space available on my hard
drive, and went to work downloading the software off the Web. And I spent the
next ten hours wading through acres and acres of incomprehensible detail while
trying to get Apache, mod_jserv and Tomcat to talk nice to each
other.
The task was made more difficult by the fact that each program
used different words to refer to the same thing in their separate documentation,
and failed to address some of the gotchas common to such a situation. In fact,
once I logged on to Deja.com [http://www.deja.com/] and visited a few of the
discussion forums, I found that quite a few of the problems I was experiencing
had been addressed by users who obviously have larger brains than mine, and it
was only after a few hours in the forums that I was finally able to get my JSP
development environment up and running.
What's my point? Very simple: if
I wasn't so pig-headed, I would have given up on JSP after the first two hours.
This would be a shame, since it's actually a pretty powerful language (and looks
particularly good on a resume). And so, I decided to put together this article
for all those of you who may be struggling with the same problems, in the hope
that it will save you some time and answer some of the questions you may
have.
No, no, you don't need to thank me. Money's better.
