Definition: Web Application
A Java web application is a concept defined by the JavaServlet specification. It's basically a folder - a folder containing the stuff that makes up a web application. Typically, the files in a web application include: html pages, gif or jpg images, Java Server Pages, Java Servlets, Java Beans, etc. The specification tells us how these files should be organized (i.e. folder names within the main web app folder) and also tells us to include a deployment descriptor.