What other libraries or tools would you add to a Spring/Hibernate stack for improved rapid application development?

Question

My team at work maintains a fairly large webapp written on top of Spring and Hibernate. We're about to start making some fairly large scale changes to the site, and we're enamored with the rapid application development speeds allowed by some other frameworks, like Rails. We haven't really changed our stack much in the last year or two, and I'm wondering what new tools, approaches, and libraries might be out there to help speed up webapp development.

Answer 1

For Spring/Java people, I can recommend having a look at:

• Grails (similar in feel to Rails, but for Java)
• Roo (a rapid application-assembly framework)

Answer 2

You'll want to prototype your changes in Seaside. If you like that, you might want to change platforms to GLASS. To get a fast start, take a look at James Fosters tutorials