This section of the cat documentation attempts to explain the architecture and design of the cat server. It includes significant contributions from several tomcat developers:

• Yoav Shapira (yoavs@apache.org)
• Jeanfrancois Arcand (jfarcand@apache.org)
• Filip Hanik (fhanik@apache.org)

The information presented is divided into the following sections:

• Overview - An overview of the cat server architecture with key terms and concepts.
• Server Startup - A detailed description, with sequence diagrams, of how the cat server starts up.
• Request Process Flow - A detailed description of how cat handles a request.