The Project Object Model (POM) is the basic unit of work in Maven. The POM is described in the pom.xml XML file and contains project and configuration details, such as the artifact coordinates, project dependencies and build profiles that Maven uses to execute goals and build the project.
For more information about POM elements, see the following pages on the Maven site:
When you use the New Project wizard to create an artifact, the IDE automatically generates pom.xml and adds the artifact details. Open pom.xml in the XML editor to edit the file. The following features are available in the XML editor to help you edit pom.xml.
After you select the type of element a dialog box opens that enables you to specify the details about the code that you want the IDE to insert into the POM.