I have just been introduced to the WebSocket Application Messaging Protocol WAMP http://wamp.ws/ and on googling I found the Crossbar.io implementation of the protocol.
I installed it by following http://crossbar.io/docs/Quick-Start/ and http://crossbar.io/docs/Getting-started-with-Java/ .
My goal is to wire a Java server publishing real time messages to be displayed on a web browser. Could you point me in the right direction? Once I have that setup, I can proceed with structuring the data using Ext JS or similar JavaScript frameworks.
The Getting Started with Java has all you need. Write your server-side program using the former. This component will then connect to Crossbar.io which does all the hard work of dispatching events in real-time to clients.