Originally posted by William Brogden:
1. If you want init params to be available in the servlet init method, yes
2. It is extremely likely you ended up with either bad XML or elements out of order. For the requirements of web.xml, download the servlet API from java.sun.com - its a big PDF file with LOTS of examples.
3. You can put the properties file in the WEB-INF directory and read it.
Bill