Need help on an interview question with J2EE server

[sdaccord01]

Hi, one of my interview questions was this:

"Assume you are an IT/Support engineer. You have a Java servlet application running on a J2EE server; the Java application is connected to an Oracle database server. Users connect to a Web server (different machine), which relays their requests to the J2EE application server. One of the users reports a ?Page Can Not Be Found? error when he tries to access the application webpage. List 3 possible problems? How do you narrow down this problem?"

Not too sure how to answer this problem, any help is appreciated.

 

[kamper]

Here're my guesses:
1. The webserver hasn't been configured to forward that particular url to the app server.
2. The app server got the request but does not have the proper url->servlet mapping set up in web.xml
3. The app server got the request but a jsp file is missing.

Narrowing it down:
1. Look at the logs. Read why the webserver returned a 404 (and make sure it is a 404, not something your application made up). Check to see if the app server got the request.
2. Try to determine which entity (servlet or jsp) should have been hit and if it exists. Then you can start to guess at where the gap is. You may need developer help on this one.