Choosing a Java platform for a large application using only one user

Question

I am creating a large application that will be hosted on an AWS server. I am trying to choose a web framework to help me with the organization of the code, the design of the templates and, as a rule, the aspects of the presentation.

Here are a few considerations:

• Require security / login / user authentication. I can add an opportunity in the future to allow more than just an administrator to access the web application, but this is not a public website.
• AJAX support would be helpful. There are a couple of widgets that I don’t want to recreate. One of them is a tree-like object in which the user can expand / contact elements in the list, create new branches, add / edit objects. This would be better in some dynamic view rather than in ugly html.
• As a rule, this is just an application for management, control and monitoring. Easier adding buttons, CSS, AJAX widgets are great additions, but not the main goal.

I am considering:

• Gate
• Spring
• The seam
• Gwt
• stripes

and the list goes on, as I am sure you all know. I originally planned to use GWT, but then I began to feel that GWT did not cover my basic needs. I could be wrong about this, but there seems to be a lot of support for GWT and Wicket / Spring. All this “got lost in the java frameworks” forced me to create a framework outside the java sphere that would fit my needs, which was a clear option, for example:

• Juby / rails
• Jython / django
• Groovy / grails
• Guice (just throwing it in there ... I don’t quite understand the main goals of all these frameworks. It doesn't seem like DInjection is what I need for a single-purpose application)

Thanks, as always. This community makes Googling an order of magnitude better for esoteric information.

Answer 1

Your problem, perhaps, is that there are many good options that make it difficult to say that one of them is “right” and the other is “wrong.”

I wonder if another way to look at it might help. Is there one (or a combination) that you especially want to learn and use? Any of them that you think will help you in your career, for example. Do many jobs in your area require Spring to be a good career boost?

On the bottom line, everything you mentioned is basically capable of creating your application. They have very different characteristics, so I do not think that you will find a technical solution to your dilemma.

Personally, I would go to Spring and GWT, but only because I like them :-)