AJAX, Server Push implementation questions

Question

Hi, I'm relatively new to the whole AJAX way of doing things so please excuse me if I'll mix two different things (although I'd appreciate it greatly if you could comment me on that). My question is this: I have many web clients (lets say around 1500) whom I want when starting up to "subscribe" to the web server with some sort of Id and then I want the web server (APACHE) to send them a relevant url (build dynamically doesn't really matter for this purpose) to display (sort of redirect). Now my problem is basically that I've spent the last few days reading a lot of articles and howto's on how this should be done and I think I have too many buzz-words. I think that in order to solve my problem I need some sort of implementation of COMET with something called "continuations" (to support that many clients). Is that correct? Am I going down the right path? Does GWT have any connection with this?

Thank you all very much in advance

EDIT: After reading some more I think that basically the Java Servlet 3.0 Asynchronous support is exactly what I need on the server side (correct me if I'm wrong) and I'm still debating on the client side? Maybe GWT after all? Thanks

Answer 1

OK, so I indeed was making a bit of a mess earlier and I'm putting it out there so my nonsense doesn't confuse anyone. What I was looking for was asynchronous request support both on the server side, regarding the thread handling to allow many users and scalability, and on the client side for ease of use of the Comet patter. I've found that Jetty, Tomcat and Grizzly all offer a solution for this (just search the specific server with Comet and see what they offer) but I've decided to use the Servlets 3.0 spec as supported in Glassfish even though it will only be released with Java EE 6 as to not be tied down to a specific server. On the client side I will probably go with GWT for many other reasons not related to Comet and because it has sufficient support for Comet. Thanks

Answer 2

You may want to try StreamHub Push Server and the accompanying GWT Comet Adapter. This will give you a scalable Comet server and a GWT Client-side.