HttpClient and Tomcat: Can someone explain something?

[Peter Molettiere <pi...@axonstudios.net>]

I'm wondering if someone can explain something fairly basic for me.

We're using axis with CommonsHTTPSender in order to get Keep Alive to 
work, in preparation for implementing SSL.

I understand how the axis config can control the class which does the 
socket handling on the client, but on the server, it seems that Tomcat 
would be handling the HTTP connection itself, and just handing 
AxisServlet the HTTPServletRequest and Response objects -- ie., I don't 
see how axis gets a chance to configure what class does the HTTP 
connection handling in Tomcat.

How does this work? Does Tomcat actually use HTTPClient when you 
specify the following in deploy.wsdd?

     <transport name="http" 
pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.http.CommonsHTTPSender">
         <requestFlow>
             <handler type="URLMapper"/>
             <handler 
type="java:org.apache.axis.handlers.http.HTTPAuthHandler"/>
         </requestFlow>
         <parameter name="qs:list" 
value="org.apache.axis.transport.http.QSListHandler"/>
         <parameter name="qs:wsdl" 
value="org.apache.axis.transport.http.QSWSDLHandler"/>
         <parameter name="qs:method" 
value="org.apache.axis.transport.http.QSMethodHandler"/>
     </transport>

How does that work? Where should I start looking to understand this 
piece of axis?

Thanks for any help at all.

--Peter