The Breakdown

GUI framework, which must be a messaging framework where components send and listen for messages from a central message bus. I am evaluating a few options including Antidote from Apache and Werx at SourceForge.

Editors each property must be editable or at least viewable. The Editor module will be able to display any type of object in a standard format. While also allowing for easy extension and customization. The initial development will be in Swing, but I would like to be able to use other GUI packages in time.

The Composer will decide what gets displayed for each object and screen. This will control what methods the user can invoke on any property or object and what properties are visible. This is the module that adds the expressiveness to the application. This needs to be easily configured.

Persistence is always an important requirement. I want to use JDO for the persistence layer. It will listen to the events from the other modules and provide transparent persistence to the rest of the application. Other types of persistence are possible such as remote persistence or serialization for small scale applications.

The entire application must be Java WebStart deployable.
The reliance on Swing should allow it to be skinable.