Tomcat / JasperReports configuration

Greetings,

I'm new to the Java / Tomcat / Eclipse environment from the PHP / C /
Unix world. As such I'm running into some confusion over the wealth of
material available out there in java land on google.

Are there any definitive references that explain the Tomcat
functionality and how / what applets are. I used Java briefly back in
the 1.2 days and my understanding of some of the terminology in this
is probably what's leading to my confusion.

The end intent of this is to try to utilize JaspReports as a web
service to a pre-existing PHP application. Any pointers on that would
also be appreciated.

Thanks,

- Craig Taylor