The forum at:
http://old.nabble.com/$%7Buser.home%7D-and-other-server.xml-tags-accepted-by-Tomcat--td19710754.html
has an excellent discussion about environment variables, and says that any of the Java System.Properties that Java can read, the server.xml file can access also. However, the DOS system properties -- like I mentioned before -- are more challenging and are not directly accessible by the server.xml file. I only have one server (well, a backup server as well), and the host computer name and network name are used to identify the location of a resource. The server functionality is being ported over from a Sun Server to Tomcat. The SunServer has a method for obtaining those values I'm looking for, but Tomcat doesn't seem to have that.
I have tried that format -- ${user.home} I mentioned in my OP in the server.xml file and it works, but its not the information I'm looking for.
I'll work with your suggestion and see what happens. Thanks.
-- Bill