摘自：
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2009/jw-02-servlet3.html?page=2
Service streaming (streaming) allows a server to send a message to a client when an event occurs, without an explicit request from the client. In real-world implementations, the client initiates a connection to the server through a request, and the response returns bits and pieces each time a server-side event occurs; the response lasts (theoretically) forever. Those bits and pieces can be interpreted by client-side JavaScript and displayed through the browser’s incremental rendering ability.
Long polling, also known as asynchronous polling, is a hybrid of pure server push and client pull. It is based on the Bayeux protocol, which uses a topic-based publish-subscribe scheme. As in streaming, a client subscribes to a connection channel on the server by sending a request. The server holds the request and waits for an event to happen. Once the event occurs (or after a predefined timeout), a complete response message is sent to the client. Upon receiving the response, the client immediately sends a new request. The server, then, almost always has an outstanding request that it can use to deliver data in response to a server-side event. Long polling is relatively easier to implement on the browser side than streaming.
Passive piggyback: When the server has an update to send, it waits for the next time the browser makes a request and then sends its update along with the response that the browser was expecting.
Service streaming and long polling, implemented with Ajax, are known as Comet, or reverse Ajax.