I am building a large application that will be hosted on an AWS server. I'm trying to select a web framework for assisting me with code organization, template design, and generally presentation aspects.
Here are some points of consideration:
Require security/login/user authentication. I may add the ability in the future to allow more than just an administrator to access the web app, but it is not a public facing website.
AJAX support would be helpful. There are a couple widgets that I don't want to recreate. One is a tree object, where the user can expand/contract items in the list, can create new branches, add/edit objects. This would be better off in some dynamic view rather than all done in ugly html.
Generally, this is just to provide the application with a face for control, management, and monitoring. Having an easier time adding buttons, CSS, AJAX widgets are great additions though, but not the primary purpose.
I'm considering:
Wicket
Spring
Seam
GWT
Stripe
and the list goes on, as I'm sure you all know. I originally planned on using GWT, but then started to feel that GWT didn't cover my primary needs. I could be wrong about this, but there seems to be a lot of support for GWT AND Wicket/Spring. All of this 'getting lost in java frameworks' got me thinking outside the java realm for a framework that would suit my needs that was a clear option, like:
JRuby/Rails
Jython/Django
Groovy/Grails
Guice (just throwing this in there... I don't clearly understand the main purposes of all these frameworks. It doesn't seem like DInjection is something I need for a single purpose application)
Thanks as always. This community makes Googling for esoteric programming information an order of magnitude better.