Using threads in Java web services

[blue_harvester]

I'm developing a web service that provides a number of different operations. However, a new thread needs to be started at the initialisation point of the web service. This thread would wake up every hour and carry out a small task.

This seems to work in NetBeans5.5 but not in Eclipse WTP. The reason I need to do it in Eclispe WTP is that we need to support Java 1.4.2 whereas I can't seem to create a web service in NetBeans5.5 for 1.4.2, it only lets me create a web service for source level 1.5.

I have a main class which I use to create a new instance of the thread. In the constructor of this main class I start the thread running. I have an operation called getThreadCount() which returns the current iteration of the loop. However, I deploy the webservice and everytime I call the getThreadCount() operation it seems to kick off a new thread! Whereas in NetBeans it only runs one thread and correctly returns the thread count. What's going on here? See code below.

public class AuditMaintenance {
	
	private AuditMaintenanceThread auditMaintenanceThread;
	
	public AuditMaintenance(){
		this.init();
    }
	
	public void init()
	{
		auditMaintenanceThread = new AuditMaintenanceThread();
		auditMaintenanceThread.start();
	}
	
	public void start() {
        // TODO implement operation
    }
	
    public void stop() {
        // TODO implement operation
    }
 
    public int getThreadCount() {
        // TODO implement operation
    	return auditMaintenanceThread.getThreadCount();
    }
 
}
 
public class AuditMaintenanceThread extends Thread{
 
	private int mThreadSleepTime = 1000;
	
	private int mThreadCount = 0;
	
	public AuditMaintenanceThread() {
    }
	
	public void run()
    {	
		while(true)
        {
            System.out.println(mThreadCount + " HELLO WORLD!");
            
            try
            {
                sleep(mThreadSleepTime);
            }
            catch (InterruptedException ex)
            {
                ex.printStackTrace();
            }
            
            mThreadCount++;
        }
		
    }
	
	public int getThreadCount()
    {
        return mThreadCount;
    }
 
}