I’m finding it difficult to embrace a Java MVC framework, when it looks as if Servlets, JSPs and a lightweight DAO will do just about everything you need it to do in order to decouple the controllers/views/models. For PHP I can see the necessity since there are no built in constructs like servlets, but do Java MVC frameworks really give you THAT much more?
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One area where Servlets/JSPs are somewhat weak is testability. Although it’s certainly possible to unit test Servlets using mocks, they don’t feel like they were designed with unit testing in mind. JSPs are even trickier. You could rely on functional tests ala Selenium, but these days, people want unit test coverage. Some of the more modern Java MVC frameworks give you more easily testable code units.
On the whole though, you’re certainly correct that a plain old Tomcat stack with a MySQL database gets the job done.