I was using JRebel trial and switched to DCEVM after trial ended. The difference i observed is, JRebel just reloads the class that is modified whereas DCEVM is almost restarting my tomcat that takes good amount of time.
Is there any setting in DCEVM to just load modified class? I have installed DCEVM as Alternate JVM.
HotswapAgent is free alternative to JRebel. It is extension to DCEVM that supports many Java frameworks and servlet containers. There is also documentation howto setup IDE to use DCEVM + HotswapAgent correctly.