What is web.xml file and what are all things can I do with it?

Question

The web.xml Deployment Descriptor Elements in Oracle\'s BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 Documentation pretty much sums up each element in a web.xml file. But I am also curious about

Answer 1

What all should I know about web.xml apart from element name and their usage ?

The SINGLE most important JSP configuration parameter of ALL TIME is in your web.xml. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the TRIM-DIRECTIVE-WHITESPACES option!

    
        *.jsp
        true
    

This removes all the hundreds or thousands of lines of white space that you'll get in your generated HTML if you use any tag libraries (loops are particularly ugly & wasteful).

The other big one is the default web page (the page you get automatically sent to when you don't enter a web page in the URL):

    index.jsp