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As of this writing there are four versions of Tomcat available. So what are the differences? Tomcat 3.x implements the JSP 1.1 and Java Servlet 2.2 APIs. Tomcat 3.2 acts as the reference implementation for these APIs. Version 3.2 was a refactoring of 3.1 and made Tomcat fully compliant with Sun’s specifications. This is the current production release, with 3.3 nearing beta. Tomcat 3.3 will make the Tomcat code more modular and aims to increase the performance of Tomcat.

What's Tomcat 4 about?

Sun Microsystems have now released the new Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 API specifications. Tomcat 4 will implement these specifications. At the heart of version four is Catalina - the new servlet engine of Tomcat. This version of Tomcat has been built from scratch to make it modular and to increase the performance and flexibility of the platform. Tomcat 4 is now at version 4.0.1, with refinements continually being added.

Why bother with 4 if 3.2 works?

It is always desirable to have a future version of software in testing and ready for deployment. By having the base of Tomcat 4 ready now the developers have provided the community with a way to quickly move to or evaluate the new specifications. They have also simultaneously built a system that is relatively stable and only required last minute tweaks as opposed to the rush of development and demand that might have ensued if they didn't have this version already available as Sun released the final version of their specifications.

There are still things missing from Tomcat 4. Currently only one web server connector has been provided, for apache 1.3, meaning that IIS has no connector. On the other hand, Tomcat 4 does provide some extra useful features and the old mod_jk connector will still work. TODO: Warp.

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