Hi Everyone,

I have an existing application that allows users to submit reports to be processed in the background. When the report is completed I dump it into a database, then send the user a message that the report is completed.

To accomplish this I have been spawning off a Thread for each report and although this is a hack, it has worked well. Up until the time we tried to port this app to a new server version (WAS 5.1 -> WAS6.0).

What I'd like to know is what is the proper way to accomplish this without holding up the user's browser? These reports can take several minutes to complete.

I do not have any EJB experience, but I'm assuming that my solution may lie in that realm.

Any help is much appreciated.

WebSphere App Server strongly discourages you from creating threads. I don't believe that the web container will prohibit you from doing this, but it is currently unsupported....

From the Servlet 2.3 spec section SRV.9.11:
"Such servlet containers should support this behavior when performed on threads created by the developer, but are not currently required to do so. Such a requirement will be added in the next version of this specification. Developers are cautioned that depending on this capability for application-created threads is nonportable."

Luckily, WAS gives you two mechanisms to do this safely; Asynchronous Beans and the Commonj WorkManager...

Here's a link:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r0/topic/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/welc6tech_asb.html

Thanks for the info Chris.

Ya, I knew I was hacking... but sometimes it has to be done. :)

I'll check out that WorkManager stuff.

please take Chris advice, i saw this post from my reader, and was about to write the exact same thing...

Don't use threads in servlets ever..we just finished re-writing an entire application because previous developers used threads throughout the app creating memory leaks,etc.

HOWEVER,
i found using Qaurtz JObs for thread like functionality.(if u dont have MDBs)