RE: Source Evaluation?

["Larry Loen" <lwloen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Clapham wrote:

>But in my (limited) experience, I've found that
>most of my servlets don't require an init() method.

Well, strictly speaking, you are correct.  However,
this is an interesting topic.  Either a static class initializer or the
init
method is a good place to stick read-only kinds of objects, especially
those that are fairly expensive to construct.

As I understand the servlet rules, you can't really use regular "instance"
variables on grounds that architecturally, multiple threads can
simultaneously
use the same servlet object.  This means modification raises thread safety
issues.  However, you can put instance variables in them that are
what Java calls "immutable" -- don't change after they are constructed.
These are thread safe by design and definition.

Still, an init method can in the end include a lot of stuff, the kind
of stuff that starts out in .ini files and are configuration specific, such
as
the www.whateversystemthisis.com prefix  and like things.

I must admit, I tend to use the static class initializer because most of
this
stuff only needs to be done once and can fit in class-wide variables.  But
if I thought about it longer, I could probably find examples that made
sense for
init as well.




Larry W. Loen  -   Senior Java and AS/400 Performance Analyst
                          Dept HP4, Rochester MN


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