WEB-INF (Tomcat) and .htaccess (httpd)
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2008-08-20 18:36:15 - Graham EllisApache Tomcat's WEB-INF directory is rather like Apache httpd's ".htxxxxx" files - they both contain data which is within the document directories, but is configuration data that's not directly visible to the web.
WEB-INF/web.xml (Tomcat) contains the extra configuration information for the current directory / application that's needed in addition to the web.xml file in the main configuration file, and that can be directly compared to the .htaccess files under httpd, which contain additional configuration data, per directory, in addition to what's in the httpd.conf file.
[link] to sample .htaccess file (Apache httpd)
[link] to sample web.xml file (Apache Tomcat, formerly Apache Jakarta Tomcat)