Reading through the Servlet specs I think this is left up to the container to decide. The specs encourage containers to pool SingleThreadServlet instances so that multiple requests can be handled in parallel using multiple servlet instances, but the specs do not require this. Also Tomcat 4 implements the Servlet 2.3 specs, while Tomcat 3 implements Servlet 2.2 specs which may differ in the requirements as well (I didn't check the 2.2 specs).
If you look in the specs page SRV 2.2 Number of Instances it reads "However, for a servlet implementing the SignleThreadModel interface, the servlet container may instantiate multiple instances to handle a heavy request load and serialize requests to a particular instance." In other words, it is up to the servlet container whether or not to pool SingleThreadServlet instances. It looks like while Tomcat 3 and Tomcat 4 handle this differently, they both comply with the specs. At the same time you probably don't want to rely on SingleThreadServlet pooling if you want your servlet to work on different containers. Hope this helps a bit. ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST". Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
