Servlet's to go 'async'

Finally the pain of implementing layers of unnecessary code (... not to mention framework hacks) to provide to the boom and bang of the ajax flavour to one's web app has finally creeped itself into the lab's for the Servlet specification.

With the release of the Servlet 3.0 specification, server side processing of Ajax applications are all set to be more efficient and servlets can now start using this in the programming model. Comet has certainly made its point and the server push ajax model, passive piggy-back, etc. are here to stay with this release.

I came across the following 2 links that should explain the whole concept much better than me interpreting a short hand version of the same.

1. JavaWorld article
2. Asynchronous support in Servlet 3.0 (Sun blogger & spec lead)

Also - the jsr makes writing the web.xml optional and move onto the bandwagon of annotations, but I personally doubt if we can get away with the web.xml backbone for several reasons such as legacy, extension packaging, etc. etc.