Hi
That is up to the container. You can deploy a folder instead of WAR file in Weblogic and
Tomcat. The only thing is that the folder must follow the correct directory structure. If you want to deploy it on some other place or like that , the WAR will be easy to handle I think.
WAR means WEB ARCHIVE. JAR :-
JAVA ARCHIVE.
WAR is an Web Aapplication archive and contains JSPs, "normal" static files (HTML, images, etc.),
servlets, tag libraries, and such.
JAR is the "normal" Java Aapplication archive, but in this context it usually contains EJBs instead of code libraries or runnable (e.g. from outside an application container) applications