The web.xml file is the deployment descriptor file for a web application. One section of the web.xml file can be used for defining a start page for the application, for example:
<web-app>
...
<welcome-file>
myWelcomeFile.jsp
</welcome-file>
...
</web-app>
If you do not define a welcome page in your web.xml file, generally a file with the name index, with extension .html, .htm, or .jsp if there is one, is used as the starting page. With JDeveloper, you can define which page is to be the default run target for the application, that is, the page of the application that is displayed first, by defining it in the properties of the project.
Once the application has started, and the start page has been displayed, navigation through the application is achieved using the following scheme:
Links, in the form of HTML anchor tags, define a target for the link, usually identifying another JSP page to which to navigate, and some text for the link.
HTML submit buttons, are used to submit forms on the pages, such as forms for entering new or changed data.
jsp:forward tags, which are executed on JSP pages that handle queries and forms, to forward to either the same JSP page again, or another JSP page.