I am developing a Java web services application that is (mostly) to be used by other SOA clients. Currently I am planning on using CXF to publish my various web services & methods using SOAP/XML.
I am now being asked to investigate a thin client web-application for this tool. I have been looking into Javascript libraries such as ExtJS and Dojo -- and they seem really straightforward. Given that this is a web application and not a web site, I really don't think I'll be creating very many static HTML pages -- maybe even just one. Mostly I plan on using an XMLHttpRequest object to hit the web services I already have and take the results and modify the DOM.
However, I have never created a browser-based UI before and in the context of a nearly 100% Javascript application I am trying to figure what role, if any, a server side MVC framwork such as Spring MVC will buy me. Is it needed for this? Whats it good for?
If you use the CXF JavaScript client generator and go for a single page JS application, I don't see what a Java MVC framework will give you (apart from extra complexity).