[Opensource] Integrating Tomcat with IIS? Why?

[DComeau at xenos.com]

Hi all,

I know that is not specifically an Expresso related question, but I have a
hunch many of the folks here are familiar with this topic... :)


I am working on an Expresso app that will be packaged and deployed at
various client sites.  All of the initial clients will be running IIS
servers.

The Expresso app I am building is actually a portion of a suite of modules
that make up the application, some of which are also web based and currently
use Asp pages (but may be ported to J2EE later if things work out well).

Anyway, my project manager is concerned about requiring our clients who are
"Microsoft shops" to maintain a Tomcat server independently of IIS and asked
me to integrate them.

The only thing I can find is the Tomcat ISAPI redirection dll that doesn't
really seem to offer much other than the redirection of requests to Tomcat.
I don't really see the point.  My app is pretty much standalone in our suite
of apps.  It's job is to update the database so a Delphi based processing
engine can process things correctly.

So I guess my questions are:

- Is the ISAPI filter the only integration available?

- Are there benefits of using the ISAPI dll for an Expresso apps (if so,
what are they)?

- Is there a way to setup Tomcat so that when you restart IIS, it restarts
Tomcat as well?

- Is there anything else I should know?


Thanks folks, 
Dave