JBoss/Tomcat access to other web apps?

[rkite01]

At work we have a help system created using html. We use JBoss/Tomcat bundled for our web application. I would like to serve the help system using Tomcat but can not figure how to do this without wrapping the help system into a war file (This is a huge and costly step a 40 Meg war file). The Help system is very large and is used for the legacy (Fat client) systems as well. If I run a stand alone webserver then I can serve the help but then it is running on a different port and webserver from the Tomcat bundled in JBoss.

[jonlee]

No. Use the AJP13 connector in Tomcat and connect the web server to this port. Refer to http://www.amitysolutions.com.au/documents/JK2-technote.pdf for information on connecting an Apache web server. The PDF needs an Acrobat 5 compatible reader.

Otherwise search the forums for information on connecting using IIS as a front-end if you are inclined to use a Microsoft web server. This configuration will also use the AJP13 connector but an ISAPI redirector instead of the Apache JK/JK2 redirector.

[jonlee]

Large volumes of static content are better served from a web server rather than Tomcat or Jetty. It is better able to handle static file access - it uses native code rather than slower Java code overlaying OS file commands.

The AJP13 configuration allows you to disable the standard Tomcat/Jetty 8080 listener as all content requests will pass through the front-end web server, and the web server when configured correctly will pass requests for dynamic content to Tomcat/Jetty or otherwise serve content from the local web server content directories.