Configuring Tomcat for Rational Application Developer and Websphere

Wouldn't it be nice to have your websphere projects run in tomcat as well, so that for those people who aren't lucky enough to have a RAD installation could easily and quickly run your projects? YES!!!

Unfortunately, its not completely straightforward how to do this, so, lest I forget, I'm keep track of the various changes here.

1. installing tomcat
-the main thing here is that added a tomcat server to RAD doesnt seem to work, unless you switch up the jre. see this thread-

http://saloon.javaranch.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=006084&p=1

2. Also, you wont be able to have a single dynamic web project target multiple runtimes if you have the websphere facets enabled.

That's all i've run into so far, hopefully this will save you some time!!


3. ugh, so far being the operative word. ok, i've found that the administration console for tomcat does not correctly configure jdbc references. looking here

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/jndi-resources-howto.html

it appears that you have to manually add a similar looking data source reference to the context.xml in conf.

4. ok, now, with projects working normally in tomcat, how about with tomcat running in rad? does it work? NOOOO!!!, ugh, apparently there is some issue with the difference in servlet mapping, this article describes it well

http://faq.javaranch.com/view?InvokerServlet

un-commenting the two section (def and mapping) for the invoker servlet i know how servlet mapping working for a spring project in RAD running on tomcat.

5. but can spring find the jdbc mapping..... NO!! of course not. oy, im getting the same error
that i got before using just tomcat, before i added the additional context reference

Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null'


6. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Application_Servers/Java/Apache_Tomcat/Q_22849258.html

some obscure eclipse setting, and who knew, META-INF actually does something...oh wait... wrong again!! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

7. finally. ok, using that setting in eclipse just gets around eclipse looking for a datasource cause its running right out of the tomcat. the final peice did end up being the context.xml file in the meta-inf AND!!! adding the oracle jars to the lib. that did it. whew. finally.