Avoiding Directories in the Classpath

For certain applications (especially if the Java Security Manager is enabled), you can improve the performance by ensuring that there are no directories in the classpath. To do so, ensure that there are no directories in the classpath elements in server.xml (serverclasspath, classpathprefix, classpathsuffix). For more information about these elements, see the Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP12 Administrator’s Configuration File Reference. Also, package the web application's .class files in a .jar archive in WEB-INF/lib instead of packaging the .class files as is in WEB-INF/classes, and ensure that the .war archive does not contain a WEB-INF/classes directory.