LDAP - classes folder - property file

Hi !
I have gone through some material regarding authentication using LDAP. During this process I came to know and found out that the LDAP properties file e.g. Ldap_abc.properties file should be in WEB-INF/classes folder if i am using tomcat.

I also know that it does not work if we put this file in some other directory and it throws a MissingResource exception. Can anyone tell me exactly why we need to put the properties file in the classes folder?

Is it like the properties file is read from the classpath or something like that.

Thanks a lot,

Rohit