Resource Definitions in context file for JNDI lookup

Question

I have a query related to the contents of element in context.xml file for Jndi look up and the resource-ref element in web.xml . The Tomcat 5.5 reference gives an overview of the Resource element.

1. As per the reference above , the valid attributes for Resource element are auth,description,name,scope,type but we do include driverClassName , url, username, password etc and a same is in the sample in the Tomcat docs. So is the explanation in the former link wrong?

2. The reference states that the inclusion of the <Resource> element in context.xml file is equivalent to the resource-ref element in web.xml . If so , can we give the driverClassName , url, username, password and the remaining attributes in web.xml and give the context.xml file a miss ? I don't think we can . So why is the reference so confusing?

Answer 1

1. Yes, it looks like the first reference is not comprehensive on all the attributes of the Resource element, the second one is much more comprehensive.

2. It is stated a little wrongly - instead of saying that the resource is equivalent to the resource-ref element in web.xml it should have said that the resource-ref in web.xml maps to the resource element in context.xml. It is a way to provide a local reference with its own name for the resource within a web application, and then during deployment time to map this internal resource name to a real container specific jndi resource - What is resource-ref in web.xml used for?