Question

This may be a very basic and simple question for experienced people, but I am a little confused about this :

If there are multiple connections to a website hosted on tomcat, will there be multiple threads or processes or what is the basic mechanism through which the underlying java, jsp code is accessed ?

Answer 1

Tomcat uses threads. There’s an article on java.net that among other things goes through the most important configuration values:

maxThreads: Tomcat uses a thread pool, and each request will be served
by any idle thread in the thread pool. maxThreads decides the maximum
number of threads that Tomcat can create to service requests.

minSpareThreads: When Tomcat is initially started, it may not create
maxThreads number of threads configured. Instead, it will create
minSpareThreads and later, on an as-needed basis, it will create more
threads until the number of threads reaches a maximum of maxThreads.

maxSpareThreads: During off-load times, Tomcat doesn’t require many of
the threads in the pool. maxSpareThreads is the maximum number of idle
threads Tomcat will retain in the pool. If this number is exceeded,
excess threads are de-referenced to allow garbage collection.

I’d recommend checking out the article.