title: tomcat 6 thread pool for asynchronous processing
body: <p>Short question: <strong>Within a Tomcat 6 app - how can I run a (separate) thread-pool?</strong></p>
  
  <p><strong>What is the best solution for running a thread pool?</strong></p>
  
  <p>Long question:<br/>
  I have a simple need here;<br/>
  Poll a database for some data, while allowing web clients wait for an answer (long poll connections).<br/>
  When this data is available at the database I'll send a reply to the relevant client.</p>
  
  <p>Saying so, I <em>prefer</em> not to dive into any framework at the moment (<code>quartz scheduler</code> maybe?).</p>
  
  <p>Therefore, as I conclude, I'll need a thread pool to do the job in the background.</p>
  
  <p><strong>So if <code>Thread</code> is what I'm about to use (actually <code>Runnable</code>), which class can organizes it all?</strong> Is there sort of a <code>ThreadPool</code> solution? Any recommendation?</p>