What are the differences between Ear , Jar and War files?

What are the differences between Ear, Jar and War files? Under what circumstances should we use each one?

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There are no structural differences between the files; they are all archived using zip/jar compression. However, they are intended for different purposes.

  • Jar files (files with a .jar extension) are intended to hold generic libraries of Java classes, resources, auxiliary files, etc.
  • War files (files with a .war extension) are intended to contain complete Web applications. In this context, a Web application is defined as a single group of files, classes, resources, .jar files that can be packaged and accessed as one servlet context.
  • Ear files (files with a .ear extension) are intended to contain complete enterprise applications. In this context, an enterprise application is defined as a collection of .jar files, resources, classes, and multiple Web applications.

Each type of file (.jar, .war, .ear) is processed uniquely by application servers, servlet containers, EJB containers, etc.

This was first published in March 2005

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