ApplicationContext Hierarchy

In a web application, when you have multiple separate contexts, for example a global context loaded by a Listener and several servlet contexts, what are the rules governing how the parent-child hierarchy is established?

I spent a few hours searching the docs and the web, and was unable to find a definitive answer. There's an answer on StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7...ontext#7748108) that says Spring sets this up, but gives no details.

Is this documented anywhere?

Spring indeed sets this up.

The dispatcherservlet detects the context loaded by the contextloaderlistener and uses that as a prent for its own applicationcontext. Each dispatcherservlet has its own applicationcontext which has the one from the contextloaderlistener as a parent. Detection is done based on name as it is stored in the ServletContext.