Comet (a.k.a. AJAX Push) is a technology that enables web clients and web servers to communicate asynchronously, allowing real-time operations and functions previously unheard of with traditional web applications to approach the capabilities of desktop applications.

Using AJAX and Comet, this presentation walks through the process of creating a simple tic-tac-toe game in which two people play while other people can watch the game via their browser. The session involves creating a simple game playable in one session and then stepping through the process of adding back-end capabilities that enable it to be used in a two-player, distributed way. The presentation is aimed at newcomers to Comet, with lots of slides of example code. Some basic knowledge of AJAX is required for the session, but no knowledge of Comet is assumed. The finished product will be available for download after the session.

This talk discusses APIs that are specific to the GlassFish Application Server; however, the general concepts are applicable to any server-side Comet implementation. Also, we'll briefly cover the new support for asynchronous communications in Servlet 3.0, which will be a part of the Java Enterprise Edition version 6.

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Speaker Bios: Jim Driscoll has worked at Sun Microsystems for 12 years, working on such projects as the first version of Servlets (in the Java Web Server), and the initial implementation of Java 2, Enterprise Edition. He is currently a Senior Engineer working on the implementation of Java Server Faces, helping to integrate technologies such as AJAX and Comet into the new release.

Arun Gupta is a technology evangelist for Web Services and Web 2.0 Applications at Sun Microsystems. He was the spec lead for JAX-WS, a committer in Project Tango, has represented Sun at W3C, WS-I, SOAP Builders and contributed to the Java EE and SE releases.