I don't know about JSP, but in the PHP world, the page is only sent to
the browser once the code has finished executing. So timing-out in the
traditional sense is not even an option, as by the time the user *STARTS*
downloading the HTML, the script has already finished executing.

   What is usually done in PHP is to check on the *next* request whether
there's any left-over work to be done from the previous request. Note that
this "next request" might not be from the same client as the one that made
the previous request.

   Garbage collection for session files, for example, is usually randomly
done 1 out of 10 times at the beginning of every request. So on average,
after every 10 requests made, the PHP engine will search the session
directory and delete all the session files older than, say, 20 minutes, for
ALL users; not just the user who made the request that invoked the PHP
engine in the first place.

   - Oliver

I don't think so but I could be wrong.

This doesn't sound right. Server will spawn an instance of servlet, then
the servlet handles the requests that come in. Get the request, give the
info, done. (Obviously, this is greatly simplified)