Previously there were some issues with trying to get GWT and Hibernate to play nice (Hibernate required Serializable, lazy-loading caused havoc, and there was manual work to map your objects), but a new library has been developed to semi-transparently map between Hibernate objects (complete with lazy-loading, etc) and objects capable of being serialized over the wire to GWT client apps. The only piece missing from here is a Spring interceptor to wrap around the service which would be able to transparently do this - I may have a crack at that myself.
So the list of libraries for my current GWT applications is:
- Spring - General application framework providing IoC, DI, AOP, and many other services for both general and web applications
- Hibernate - Generic ORM solution. Probably the best of the current crop - integrates as an EJB3 persistance provider as well.
- Google Web Toolkit - Browser client-side application development framework, including AJAX functionality
- Rocket-GWT - Lots of client-side GWT widgets here
- gwt-widget-server - Provides easy integration between Spring and GWT for the service layer functions
- Hiberate4GWT - Provides easy integration between your GWT POJOs and Hibernate POJOs
