Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 Update 5 Developer's Guide to Java Web Applications

About Deploying Applications

A web application is a collection of servlets, JSP, HTML documents, and other web resources that might include image files, compressed archives, and other data. A web application can be packaged into a Web ARchive file (a WAR file) or exist in an open directory structure. For more information, see Chapter 9, Deploying Web Applications.