This belongs in the
struts forum instead of JSP forum. According to the
Struts Documentation
Specifies the attribute name of the bean whose property is accessed to retrieve the value specified by property (if specified). If property is not specified, the value of this bean itself will be rendered
From quickly reading the documentation, the tag assumes that you are using an object that follows the
java bean naming standard. It seems like the tag is suposed to use the name and property attributes (similar to the jsp:getProperty tag) to display the value of the a bean's property. It also sounds like in the absence of the property tag, it will print the object toString() method.