Understanding Tomcat Configuration

<Host name="localhost" appBase="C:/apps/apache-tomcat/null"
       unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
       xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">

<Context path="/" docBase="C:/apps/apache-tomcat/DeployedApps/HelloWorld" debug="0" reloadable="false" crossContext="false"/>

Then…
http://localhost/index.jsp yields to the “index.jsp” under HelloWorld folder.
http://localhost/HelloWorld/index.jsp yields to a “404 Page”.

Case #2:
When the Tomcat setup is this:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="C:/apps/apache-tomcat/null"
       unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
       xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">

<Context path="/hw" docBase="C:/apps/apache-tomcat/DeployedApps/HelloWorld" debug="0" reloadable="false" crossContext="false"/>

Then…
http://localhost/index.jsp yields to a “blank page”.
http://localhost/HelloWorld/index.jsp yields to a “blank page”.
http://localhost/hw/index.jsp yields to the “index.jsp”.

So if the objective is to deliver “HelloWorld” as the default application for the root context, then the configuration for that instance should like “case #1”. If the objective of a particular application to be bound to a “path”=”application context”, then we need to deploy that instance as “case #2”.

I hope this clarifies the two models.