Reporting the progress of a servlet

[douglasjd2000]

I have a servlet that needs to report its progress and stop if the user
cancels.

As a test I have tried using the outputstream of the
HttpServletResponse to flush dots to the client. It works in that I am
able to know when the user leaves the page but results in a page of
dots when the servlet runs to completion.

I've also tried setting a session attribute and having the client
check for it but I can't get the client to refresh and detect it.

What is the proper way to notify the client it needs to update?

Thanks,

Douglas