I'm not from a serious Java background but have you tried http://www.playframework.org/ http://www.playframework.org/ I would recommend Rails too than Drupal/P

I'm not from a serious Java background but have you tried http://www.playframework.org/ http://www.playframework.org/ I would recommend Rails too than Drupal/PHP. Since you're a beginner on Rails, i would recommend you try out Django/Python too. It won't require much effort to catch up to speed on the basics and maybe you can use those skills to run the application on Google App Engine for free too.