14.1. What is Cactus?

Cactus is an open source framework (http://jakarta.apache.org/cactus/) for in-container testing server-side Java code (mostly Java EE components in the current version of Cactus). It’s an extension of JUnit that was created by Vincent Massol in 1998.

Before we go any further, I’d like to clarify the definitions just mentioned. When we say Cactus is a framework, we mean that it provides an API that you have to extend in order to use it.