James Ward

Shouldn't your TestServlet servlet be implementing CometProcessor ?
As per: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/aio.html

Try 'smsniff' (google it); it sniffs all tcp conversations taking place from your windows machine and presents them in a neat UI. Have never tried it for JDBC though; but it does give size information.

justsniffer - this tool specifically claims to capture jdbc related packets (not sure if it gives size information):
http://justniffer.sourceforge.net/

You have two options:

1. Resort to clustering, so that sessions are cluster-wide - then you can kill sessions on any server, and it will get replicated everywhere.

2. Store Session and Server information in database (i.e when it is created.). When a session is being created you know on what server it is happening (give every server a unique name), so you can easily store this information in a database table.

I have to pass this new value some how to a predefined javascript function.

Not sure if i understood your query properly but,
You can take value in JSP, and put it against a JavaScript variable.

Pseudo-code:
<% String myValue = "whatever"; %> <script> var x = <%=myValue%> </script>

Is your JAVA_HOME environment variable set properly? This is a very likely cause of the problem.
What do you see if you simply type java -version at command prompt.

Same problem discussed here:
http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=587627

Putting jsessionid in URL is a feature of the Application Server, and not of Struts Framework.

You can use AJAX to send over your request to the server and receive and process the response.
Alternatively, when the page is loaded, you must pick the new value in JSP code itself somehow.

is the HR department of ABC right in sharing that information which is marked private and confidential

I think it is not right for a company to share this information with anyone. And as far as i can tell, they do not share this. Therefore, the onus is on the candidate to provide proof of his previous salary by way of Salary Slip/Appointment Letter/Service Certificate etc. Usually the companies do ask for previous salary proof (And these days you get salary slips in your email instead of a hard-copy, making the things even more virtual)!

Usually the following are happens:
1. Your last 2 jobs may be verified. So, keep these in order.
2. Smaller companies/startups - do not spend time and money in doing extensive background checks. Bigger companies especially like Fidelity/Accenture are known to do a lot of background checks.
3. Many of these background checks are bogus - as these are done by third-parties. Often these third-parties are simply unable to collect any information.

There is probably no way; as the behavior is in control of the end user.

But this link:
http://sillydog.org/forum/sdt_3804.php

says you can use the following, and it works in IE7/FireFox:
"target=_newtab"

How have the companies been requiring Java FX against other RIA technologies?

I am yet to see any advertised job opening that asked for JavaFX as a skill (it may exist, just saying i have never seen it).

Other RIA technologies - Flash/Flex based skills are often advertised; and i think they will be even more in demand as Adobe AIR (which is flash/flex desktop application runtime) becomes popular.

In my opinion JavaFX is indeed late.

Flex based applications are quite mature these days, and Flex(Flash) front-end with J2EE back-end is now becoming popular too.

Also - it is very easy for a Java Programmer to pickup Flex as the Scripting language used in Flex (ActionScript) is very much java like (Flex IDE is basically an Eclipse IDE flavor!).

But, you may want to consider the following too:
1. Silverlight too is a bit late.
2. There may be space for more than one player(Flex,Sliverlight,JavaFX) here - so JavaFX may have a future - But - there does not seem to be any noise/news/push from Sun/Oracle in this direction these days - dont know why. And when was the last time you saw a real-world application in JavaFX (it is yet to reach that tipping point).

There are quite a few alternatives available to Web Services these days:

Custom-XML/HTTP
RPC/HTTP
REST / HTTP Invocations.

You can argue that WebServices is SOAP/HTTP(similar), but implementing WebServices is far more complex than other integration mechanisms. Even the original idea of discovering WebServices (via UDDI etc) seem to have been lost now.

What do you think: is the complexity involved in WebServices justify their usefulness?

For example:
Google Docs - provides REST-Style/HTTP calls for invoking its services. It does not provide WebServices interrface. This is true of many such integrations as well.