structure/layout question

[Frank Baumgart <fr...@esc-electronics.de>]

Hello!

I set up tomcat (3.1) with Apache 1.3.12 on Linux.
Works fine so far.

Currently, integration of Tomcat and Apache seems not very
tight. As this might change (will it? how?) I want to ask
here about the best setup (which still should make sense in
the long term) for my situation first.

The situation is as follows:

The Web-Server has to provide static (Apache) as well as
dynamic (some/few cgi, much JSPs) content for DIFFERENT
customers. So I already set up virtual hosting.
(Will Tomcat 3.2 allow to use the same JVM for different
virt. hosts?)

There is a large overlap in content between the different
virt. hosts, but presentation differs much. So I want to
share the beans but have specific JSPs.

For maintenance reasons, I want to have the JSPs in the
same path as the surrounding static html context.
Say:
Dir: ..../htdocs/service-one/
Files: service.jsp , some-header.html, some-tail.html etc.

The first step seems to be to make the DocumentRoot of
Apache and Tomcat point to the same place.


Q: Does this make sense???


How do I deny access to WEB-INF, *whereever* they are on the
web server's cluttered (htdocs) structure?
Is "<LocationMatch */WEB-INF>" correct and sufficient?

Basically, I do not want to maintain two paths (one in tomcat/
webapps, one in apache/htdocs) for every service.
That would make not only make it difficult for the beans/jsp
writer to work with the html designer but it becomes
confusing for the large number of JSPs/services soon.

But one time I need more processing power for JSPs and set
up a separate physical tomcat server, a common path looks
detrimental.

Is there a FAQ that handles this question?
Or a known-good approach?

THX,

Frank