A JSP declaration is always defined inside the class but outside the service (or any other) method. It’s that simple—declarations are for static and instance variables and methods. (In theory, yes, you could define other members including inner classes, but 99.9999% of the time you’ll use declarations for methods and variables.) The code below solves Pauline’s problem; now the counter keeps incrementing each time a client requests the page.

Variable Declaration

Method Declaration