Element Referencing

One element references another when an attribute of the referencing element has the same value as an attribute of the referenced element. For example, the application-ref element references an application that is deployed to its parent server element. The application-ref element’s ref attribute has the same value as the name attribute of an application element.

The referencing application-ref element might look like this:

<application-ref ref="MyServlet"/>

The referenced application element might look like this:

<application name="MyServlet" location="myservletdir"/>