Programming Jakarta Struts

Deciding How to Package Your Application

Because Struts applications are web applications, most of the questions about how to package them are answered in the Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications. A web application must follow a very strict set of completely specified guidelines and conventions that make the web application portable across other compatible web containers.

Fortunately, packaging your Struts application in the WAR format solves much of the hassle regarding packaging. However, there are many questions that you will have to resolve. For example, you’ll have to decide where all the JSP pages go and whether you should store your Struts Action and ActionForm classes together or in separate action and form packages. Although there are definitely best practices, there are no hard-and-fast rules for resolving issues such as these. Some of the solutions will depend on your organization’s requirements and policies.

Namespace Management

A namespace is simply a set of names that may or may not be associated. A namespace is normally used to prevent conflicts or collisions between similar entities and to allow clients to reference these entities by some logical name.

In software development, a namespace is a way to package classes, interfaces, and other types of information into a hierarchical structure. There are many examples of namespaces throughout the computer industry. The manner in which the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) works is a type of namespace. Within the ...