Running a forum on a tomcat server?

I'm a university student studying computer science and in the 1st year of my degree I was taught java programming and web development with jsp using tomcat. Since I'm interested in web development and I am familiar with the java language I have set up my own tomcat server at home to play with. One of the things I was interested in doing was learning how to run a forum on a web server, now all the forums that I have looked at such as VB are based on php. Is it possible to run these on a tomcat server? I don't have any experience with php, and my SQL experience is limited to an Oracle database course I did at high school. Any information would be much appreciated.

ashley stewart wrote:Is it possible to run these on a tomcat server?

Sure. JavaRanch uses JForum, which can run on tomcat.

If it's a PHP-based application, the Apache HTTP Server may be a better choice.

Joe Ess wrote:
Sure. JavaRanch uses JForum, which can run on tomcat.

Thanks, it looks perfect. I have unzipped the forum into the correct directory and the installer page is coming up but it says that I need to have a database already created in order to install the forum. I know relatively little on how to create the kind of database required for a forum.

ashley stewart wrote:I know relatively little on how to create the kind of database required for a forum.

Apparently you can choose HSQLDB when you install and JForum will create the database for you (install document)

You're right! Thanks.