Nick,
Given the provocative title of the post, I found the community's response
remarkably restrained. Having worked with Tomcat for the past year and a
half in a production environment (integrated with APACHE in a multihosted
environment, now with mod_jk) I have little to complain about. Doubtless
some effort is required to set up such an environment and those faced with
it aren't likely to have a lot of time to give back. But I think its pretty
safe to say no one is going to make time for one so pretentious and
blantantly critical. Having used JRun, Weblogic, I can tell you with
assurance that money spent here won't provide you with the high-flown
expectations you apparently held for Tomcat. The responses people gave
weren't attacks, they're facts ... like the software, they're free, you can
take them or leave them. My experience has been that a polite well placed
question goes pretty far around here.
Cheers,
Todd V.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Stoianov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 6:10 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; pete
Subject: Re: TOMCAT SUCKS
To all of you "tomcat fans",
Attacking me with these immature e-mails shows the following things:
1. not accepting other people's opinions and experiences
2. blindly repeating the same things over and over again.
1st of all - how many of you have installed Tomcat with about 30 virtual
servers with integrated Apache behind a load balancer?
When you make this work - then you can tell me how good Tomcat is.
I tried it - it works - but it's not stable and mod_jk is slow when you have
this multihost environment.
2nd of all - you are right, there is no sign "Get your complete and
comprehensive documentation here". But this doesn't solve the problem with
the lack of documentation. Linux is open source too - look how many books
are
there on Linux.
3rd - it's not my job to hire somebody to write a book about Tomcat. I'm
just
stating that I will not use it until somebody writes something.
Unfortunately
I don't have the time to write a book about Tomcat.
4th - reading your solution about writing a shell or Perl script for the
servlets mapping problem shows that you have no idea about SHELL scripting
nor PERL programming (and I guess Tomcat either)
5th - I haven't met anybody in this mailing list who has a complex
installation of Tomcat with a lot of virtual hosts , different ports and
load
balancers. So - who will help me in situation like this? No books , no
support, no help from the mailing list.
Thanks
Nick
On Wednesday 27 June 2001 04:01 pm, pete wrote:
> If there is a lack of documentation, that is par for the course with any
> project that doesn't have paid technical writers. I don't recall seeing
> a big sign on the front of jakarta.apache.org saying 'Get your complete
> and comprehensive documentation here'.
>
> If you wanted to, you could probably hire someone from this list to
> write up a good configuration guide for tomcat, for less than the price
> of a WebLogic license. Maybe you could think about that. You would then
> have both solved your problem, contributed in a meaningful way to the
> community and helped a fellow tomcat user financially, instead of
> finding, 6 months down the track, that tomcat outperforms, is more
> stable and a lot cheaper than WebLogic, yet still has no good docs.
>
> Your comment about mod_jk is just wrong. Exactly how does it slow down
> your web server by 1000%? I imagine if you are using servlets heavily,
> and this results in max CPU usage or something, then apache will
> struggle to serve requests, but this situation would be no different if
> you ran tomcat standalone, or if you switched to another servlet engine.
>
> If your virtual hosts have different servlet mappings? well, worst case
> scenario you could write a perl or shell script, or better still a GUI
> or servlet-based Java app that automated these configuration chores. You
> know what you could then do? You could contribute it back to the project
> so that other people can use it to save time.
>
> And if you have a problem no-one has experienced before, and posting to
> the mailing list doesn't elicit a reply? I suppose these commercial
> servlet engines are all 100% bugless, trouble free, and have perfect
> tchnical support. Of course nobody has problems with these servlet
> engines, which is why the Resin, JRun and WebLogic mailing lists are
> completely empty, and you can't find a single link on google when you
> type 'resin problem' or 'weblogic problem' into it.
>
> If Tomcat does not fit your needs, or you are unable to configure it
> correctly, by all means, ask for help. But don't claim it SUCKs just
> because you can't solve your own problems, or phrase your questions in
> such an obnoxious manner that help is unlikely to be willingly provided.
>
>
>
> -Pete
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I really think that TOMCAT SUCKS so bad. I'm not against the open source
> > community but this is why I think that TOMCAT sucks:
> >
> > 1. The documentation for Tomcat is so bad and it covers only the basic
> > server installation. HELLOOOO - usually for production purposes people
> > have load balancers, virtual hosts, etc.2. Virtual hosting for Tomcat is
> > almost impossible - especially if you have a load balancer in front of
> > the web server.
> >
> > 3. The integration with apache (using mod_jk) sucks. It slows down the
> > productivity of the web server with at least 1000%
> >
> > 4. And guess what is the hell you have to go through if your virtual
> > hosts have different servlets mappings. You waste time and you know -
> > time is money.
> >
> > 5. And what if you have a problem that is not in the documentation (99%
> > of the problem with Tomcat are not even mentioned in the documentation)?
> > I guess the only way is to post in the mailing list. And guess what
> > happens if nobody has experienced this problem before? You have to start
> > wasting your time again.
> >
> > I really think that TOMCAT is OK for testing purposes. Trust me - for
> > complex configurations it sucks.
> > If you want to use a good production application server - take a look at
> > WebLogic, Resin, Allaire JRun, etc.
> >
> > Nick
