Luckily I was pointed in the direction of a Java Web Application framework called Grails. If you haven’t heard of it or used it, I highly suggest checking it out. I’m not a Java guy, but it only took me two weeks to really come up to speed with Grails. My favorite parts of grails are the ORM (Object Relational Mapper) that abstracts the database interaction from SQL into objects and methods. I’ve also enjoyed messing with the AJAX functionality (prototype and scriptaculous).

Within three weeks, I’ve developed a management tool that is gaining functionality every week. It’s not to the point where I’d release it unto the world, but hopefully I can get it there sooner than later. I’ll be posting some how-to’s on some issues I faced with AJAX and creating my UI.