Front Controller Pattern and the Apache Struts Framework

I came across the Struts Framework last year when I had to design a little program that I thought it would be great to use it for as the framework seemed to be away of decreasing complexity of an application and increasing the maintainability of code. I ended up having a few issues with the framework due to the fact my application had to be integrated into a bigger application, which incidentally wasn't the fault of Struts.

Anyway I have recently been reading about Struts again due to the project separating into the Struts Action Framework and the Struts Shale Framework. The first is used with JSP pages and the latter is used with Java Server Faces.

Struts is an example of a Front Controller design pattern. This design pattern is based on hiding complexity, separation of concerns and loose coupling. More can be read about this design pattern here.