Scenario 2 – Using a general high-level web application framework

The second possibility would be to use a complete web application framework. These frameworks usually offer higher-level APIs than enterprise frameworks and offer built-in model-view-controller (MVC) solutions that have the capability to enhance a developer's productivity significantly.

Frameworks such as these usually dictate or steer the developer in a certain direction as they have built-in support for only a few hardcoded libraries/toolkits. Often, plugins are supported to add support to other choices, however. By giving up some freedom, quick development cycles can be achieved. Some frameworks require that the application is run inside a JVM application server, while other frameworks provide their own HTTP server.

Apache Struts used to be very popular in this category, but nowadays, the Play framework is probably the most popular choice.