title: What does the servlet <load-on-startup> value signify
body: <p>I am getting a bit confused here. In our application we are having a few servlets defined. Here is the excerpt from the <code>web.xml</code> for one of the servlets:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;servlet&gt;
      &lt;servlet-name&gt;AxisServlet&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
      &lt;display-name&gt;Apache-Axis Servlet&lt;/display-name&gt;
      &lt;servlet-class&gt;com.foo.framework.axis2.http.FrameworkServlet&lt;/servlet-class&gt;
      &lt;load-on-startup&gt;0&lt;/load-on-startup&gt;
  &lt;/servlet&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As per my understanding the value for the <code>&lt;load-on-startup&gt;</code> has to be a positive integer in order for it to get loaded automatically. I looked up on google but the responses I came across only added to my confusion.</p>