Canonical Tag can be used as 301 redirect alternative??

Hi ,

Can I use canonical tag as main alternative of 301 redirect for showing only one form of my website to google and also to remove the duplicate content issue.

Because of my website which is made in Java(JSP) ,and lack of development support I am not able to set the 301 redirect in .htaccess file.When I was checking with Screaming from it is showing both the url data - www and non-www .

Any other alternative of removing different version and duplicate content of website except 301 redirect.!

Use canonical... and then read these guidelines to learn about configuring your tomcat server to do the right thing:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...t-to-use-www-domain-com-instead-of-domain-com

Thanks for your reply .
I made changes in my website by adding canonical tag on nearly every page .
And for the tomcat server need to R & D on that.
but for now , lets see how it effect my ranking