Maven uses a declarative approach, where the project structure and contents are described, rather then the task-based approach used in Ant or in traditional make files, for example.

A maven temp directory called target is created directly under C:Sample-Maven-Project, which contains all the compiled class files. As I have stated earlier Maven's power lies in its plugins.

Maven is another project management/build tool on the open source scene. Maven, which is compatible with Ant, is a project management tool that takes Ant concepts several steps further.