Things to think about...

I've been using restlet on a couple of client projects recently and you could say that it's piqued my interest in Java web frameworks and more.

I had been using 'proper' J2EE frameworks for what seems like forever now and this came up as a refreshing change, I loved the whole 'non-app serverness' of it all :)

So my explorations have taken me to Wicket, probably most pure 'java' web framework I've looked at. It's kind of neat, but takes a bit of getting your head around the way it models certain components. I very much liked the way the templates are pure xhtml and contain no crazy scripting or embedded markup (and therefore can be edited by designers with no knowledge of strange JSF components). Like Restlet, Wicket uses Jetty as the webserver by default (although it's not mandatory) and means I can bundle up my apps into a single .jar file for distribution.

However, my most surprising find (as a die hard EJB user - yeah, even since back when it really sucked) has been Active Objects. Ok, this wasn't really a 'find' I've known about it for a while and I know the guy who wrote it, but I've never played with it. But playing with new frameworks made me want to find a quick and simple persistence mechanism that didn't really involve setting anything up.

Again, Active Objects seems very Java-y. It doesn't require any configuration (other than the datasource) and unlike JPA/Hibernate it uses Interfaces rather than POJOs. However, I found that despite the lack of documentation I had everything I needed up and running for a simple data model within the first hour of playing with it - including the databse.

I'm aware that there are a few bits of esoteric stuff Active Objects won't do (distributed transactions, for example) but it covers most bases more than adequately, including cacheing. It's strength, however, is it's simplicy and light weight approach. The API makes a kind of immediate sense, especially if you've used other ORM solutions and I've found it a pleasure to work with.

I'm looking forward to using it on some 'real' projects in the near-future.