Patrick Lightbody >> The frameworks evaluated were Dojo, Rico, and Prototype/Scriptaculous. Of the three, we found that Dojo has the most solid foundation as a JavaScript framework, where as the others as simply libraries. This was an important distinction. The widget framework that Dojo offers keeps almost all of the complex JavaScript away from page developers, which was something we wanted to encourage with AJAX/WebWork integration.

"Of Dojo, Rico, and Prototype/Scriptaculous, we found that Dojo has the most solid foundation as a JavaScript framework..."

With that said, we've found Dojo has been incredibly frustrating for new users. The documentation is very difficult to follow and many new users find the straightforward nature of the other JavaScript libraries to be easier to get started with. I happen to agree. I don't know what the future will look like, but I know that some users are working on Scriptaculous integration as well, so it may very well be that you'll get to choose which framework you want to work with in the near future.

IndicThreads >> Does WebWork's Ajax support come primarily from the bundling of the Dojo framework on the client side, or did you make major Ajax specific changes on the server side?

Patrick Lightbody >> Most of the features are really just thin wrappers around some client-side Dojo widgets we created. However, the AJAX validation support does make a significant use of a server-side component. That component, which is called by using DWR, checks that the values in the HTML form validate against the server-side validation rules. This style of validation is appealing because your validation rules don't need to be written twice: once in JavaScript and once in Java.

IndicThreads >> How well does WebWork integrate with other popular open source tools like Hibernate?

Patrick Lightbody >> Hibernate works great with WebWork. All the common patterns, such as OpenSessionInView, play nice as well. For the most part, the IOC container does this type of integration, so if it works well in Spring, odds are it will work well with WebWork.

"If it works well in Spring, odds are it will work well with WebWork..."

IndicThreads >> What effect do you think will EJB3 have on frameworks like WebWork and Spring?

Patrick Lightbody >>It's hard to say. I come from a background where I tried EJB 2 in a large project with very little success. For the applications I work on, I don't see a lot of value of using a more complicated deployment environment, such as an EJB server, when open source alternatives such as iBatis or Hibernate + Spring are already available.

"The key to EJB3 lies in the tool support..."

I think the real key will be in tool support. If the vendors, such as JetBrains, which makes IntelliJ IDEA, add great support for EJB3, I may find myself using it simply out of convenience.