Getting your J2EE application quickly up and running is a challenge particularly when you are using a variety of open source frameworks, configuring it and structuring your application and integrating them all together and making it work might take a while till your developers are comfortable to start really working on the problem. AppFuse is an open source tool that can kick start your J2EE development. Similar to how you create a rails application with a command, creating a J2EE application that Struts+Hibernate+Spring with AppFuse involves executing few ant scripts.

AppFuse is an application for “kickstarting” webapp development. Download, extract and execute ant new to instantly be up and running with a Struts+Spring+Hibernate app running on Tomcat/MySQL app. Uses Ant, XDoclet, Spring, Hibernate (or iBATIS), JUnit, jMock, StrutsTestCase, Canoo’s WebTest, Struts Menu, Display Tag Library, OSCache, JSTL and Struts (Spring MVC, WebWork, Tapestry and JSF are also options). To learn more about AppFuse, its history, goals and future, checkout AppFuse: Start Your J2EE Web Apps on java.net. You can also watch this video, which shows you how to create a project with AppFuse - as well as gives you a tour of its out-of-the-box features.