Java Development Tools

Hello

I'm new to learning JSP development, using JDeveloper (10.1.3) and Tomcat(5.5)/Jakarta ISAPI Redirector (1.2.14) on top of IIS. I'm just starting to get the hang of web applications and directory structures. So far I've been manually copying my classes and HTML/JSP files from development to deployment directories but now I want to use the JDeveloper IDE to manage my files and deploy them as my projects get more complex. I have a problem that I'm pulling my hair out about: When I deploy my application using JDeveloper via a WAR archive none of my JSP or HTML pages get served to my browser correctly. For example, a simple "hello world" page will not display anything in my browser. A check of the source code of the web page yields an empty document. This is the case for both HTML and JSP pages. The odd thing is that servlets work. If I type a URL to a servlet inside my application, it works fine. Now if I delete the WAR file and the deployment directory and copy the application files over manually, everything works as expected in the web browser. The culprit (I think) is the WEB-INF\web.xml file. In my manual copy process, I do not have a web.xml file. The text I'm studying from says I don't need it for the simple apps I've done so far. However, JDeveloper requires one for deployment and since I don't know what to put in it, I leave the default contents alone. So my question is: What do I need to do to the WEB-INF\web.xml file to make sure deployed-from-JDeveloper application is able to process HTML and JSP pages? A second question would be: Is there a way to configure JDeveloper such that I don't have to have a web.xml file?

Thanks.