I prefer Wicket over Seam for lightweight web applications. I spent a year or two trying to like JSF and I just can't do it. I find that Wicket's approach to

I prefer Wicket over Seam for lightweight web applications. I spent a year or two trying to like JSF and I just can't do it. I find that Wicket's approach to building the UI is more closely aligned to how I work and think. I've also played with the Stripes framework a bit and it seems like a nice option but I haven't done anything extensive with it yet. Hibernate is my default choice for the persistence layer. It can be a little tricky if you're tying into an existing legacy data model with a bad design.