allow easy creation of executable war

Other popular Servlet Containers and Application Servers support the building of an executable war bundle, via Apache Maven. This will allow you to easily bundle your WAR/EAR into an executable war which will unpack and launch the WAR/EAR, via java -jar myapp.war.

http://tomcat.apache.org/maven-plugin-2.0/tomcat7-maven-plugin/exec-war-mojo.html
http://rmannibucau.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/executable-jar-with-tomee-and-tomcat-maven-plugin/