Problem porting servlets from JServ to Tomcat

[Dave DeHaan <dd...@dordt.edu>]

I'm trying to port my servlets from JServ 1.1.2 to Tomcat 3.1.  Most of them have worked fine; however, I cannot get the Novell GroupWise WebAccess servlet to function properly.  It worked fine under JServ 1.1.2.  This was on the same machine with the same JDK 1.2.2 installation.  I have verified that all of the .jar files are in the classpath, and that the init arguments are properly entered into web.xml.  

Here is the error message from tomcat.log:

Context log: path="" Error in webacc init(): null java.lang.NullPointerException	at java.util.Hashtable.put(Hashtable.java:377)	at com.novell.webaccess.common.I18NPropertyBundle.getI18NPropertyBundle(I18NPropertyBundle.java:221)	at com.novell.webaccess.common.I18NPropertyBundle.getI18NPropertyBundle(I18NPropertyBundle.java:39)	at com.novell.webaccess.common.I18NPropertyBundle.getI18NPropertyBundle(I18NPropertyBundle.java:30)	at com.novell.webaccess.WebAccessServlet.init(WebAccessServlet.java:110)	at org.apache.tomcat.core.ServletWrapper.initServlet(ServletWrapper.java:315)	at org.apache.tomcat.core.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:445)	at org.apache.tomcat.core.ContextManager.service(ContextManager.java:559)	at org.apache.tomcat.service.http.HttpConnectionHandler.processConnection(HttpConnectionHandler.java:160)	at org.apache.tomcat.service.TcpConnectionThread.run(SimpleTcpEndpoint.java:338)	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:475)

Unfortunately, Novell will not support this platform.  However, they assert that their servlets should run on any servlet container meeting the following:
    - Compatible with Java Servlet Development Kit (JSDK) 2.0
     - Compatible with Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1.6 or above

Does anyone have a clue as to why this servlet won't load?

Thanks.

David E. DeHaan
ddehaan@dordt.edu

Re: Problem porting servlets from JServ to Tomcat

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

Dave DeHaan wrote:

>     - Compatible with Java Servlet Development Kit (JSDK) 2.0
>

This is likely to be the key to your problem.  Several major things from the Servlet 2.0 API were deprecated -- for example, the ServletContext.getServlet() method now returns null, and you can no longer use an HttpSessionContext at all -- so if this application requires those features of 2.0, it will not run under Tomcat.

>
> Does anyone have a clue as to why this servlet won't load?
>

Without source code, (in particular for the init() method of the com.novell.webaccess.WebAccessServlet class), there isn't much anyone can do to help you further.

>
> Thanks.
>
> David E. DeHaan
> ddehaan@dordt.edu

Craig McClanahan