You know, the
J2EE spec explains all of this. It's a good place to start for these kind of questions.
Anyway, an EAR contains not only WARs but EJB JAR files too. Also, and EAR provides information that unifies the security model and other metadata between the different JARs and EARS that it contains.
Kyle
[ February 23, 2002: Message edited by: Kyle Brown ]
[ February 23, 2002: Message edited by: Kyle Brown ]