In a sense, what a project is to its group of related files, a workspace is to a group of related projects. Grouping your files by workspace and project enables you to sort your work logically and hierarchically. Just as you can display several projects at one time, so you can display several workspaces. You can "tear off" workspaces into separate navigator windows, should you wish, or leave them all displayed in the default System Navigator. Closing a workspace or project unloads those files from memory. Removing a workspace or project from the IDE can help reduce clutter when you are not working with a given set of files. Removing files from the IDE does not delete them from where they reside. It only affects whether or not they are displayed in the Navigator. The list of files for a given workspace is stored in the workspace file, the .jws file in the Navigator that acts as parent node for all the contained projects. You don't edit these workspace files directly. Rather, whenever you save the files in your workspace, all of the current open files are stored for you. Note that saving the .jws file is not the same as saving all the files (choosing Save All) within the workspace. Workspaces and packages also define where and how the files within a project are stored