Posted in: Servlets FAQs
- If the value is not specified or is a Number < 0 then it means "lazy loading"
- What " lazy loading " means is that servlet is NOT loaded by container on startup
- Servlet in this case is loaded on the first client request - so the first client can experience poor performance
- " Eager " loading means that the servlet is initialised on container startup
- If there are two servelts A & B with values 0 & 1 than it means that Servlet A ( having value = 0 ) will be loaded first
- So if there are more than one servlet this element specifies the order of loading - lower integer values ( including zero ) are loaded first
- If you specify this element but do not provide the value - even then the servlet will be the first servlet that gets loaded
- To ensure that servlet follows " lazy loading " - do not provide this entry at all in web.xml file OR provide a negative number