Starting Tomcat 4 Server

Dear Reader,
I am new to Tomcat.
Question 1: How tomcat.exe starts the tomcat server?
Question 2: What is the relationship between tomcat.exe and Startup.bat(starts up the tomcat server)?
Question 3: How to start Tomcat 4 server on Windows from a java program?
What are the best resources to learn more about Tomcat 4 server.
Thank you in advance
Garandi

1) I've never double-clicked tomcat.exe before. It opens a dos window which disappears after about 10 seconds. I have no idea what this file does. So my answer is: It doesn't (Start the tomcat server).

2) None that I can see. There is no call to tomcat.exe in startup.bat *or* catalina.bat

3) I'm not sure why you'd want to do this. There are startup scripts (DOS based) and a Windows Service that you can take advantage of to start Tomcat. But if you need/want to, you can start Tomcat from within java like any other program within java... use the Runtime.getRuntime() and various exec() methods.

Tomcat docs are fairly complete. I know it's somewhat tedious to say, but reading the docs is a good idea.