linux - What does Virtual memory size in top mean?

I am running top to monitor my server performance and 2 of my java processes show virtual memory of up to 800MB-1GB. Is that a bad thing?

What does virtual memory mean?

And oh btw, I have swap of 1GB and it shows 0% used. So I am confused.

Java process = 1 Tomcat server + my own java daemon Server = Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic)