This article is all about the Struts web application framework. For those of you who don't know what Struts is, I recommend you read the Newbie FAQ available on the Struts website.

The sample webapp in this article uses Maven for project management tasks such as build management, continuous testing integration, and deployment. If you are familiar with Ant, but not Maven, try Maven for Ant Users. For a more general introduction to Maven, try the Maven User's Guide and Jeff Linwood's JavaWorld article "Maven ties together tools for better code management", along with my own "Using Maven to Simplify Project Management".

The sample webapp uses the JUnit unit-testing framework. This framework simplifies the job of developing and running a suite of unit-tests to make sure your applications is doing what it is supposed to do.