Dropwizard straddles the line between being a library and a framework. Its goal is to provide performant, reliable implementations of everything a production-ready web application needs. Because this functionality is extracted into a reusable library, your application remains lean and focused, reducing both time-to-market and maintenance burdens. Jetty for HTTP Because you can’t be a web application without HTTP, Dropwizard uses the Jetty HTTP library to embed an incredibly tuned HTTP server directly into your project. Instead of handing your application off to a complicated application server, Dropwizard projects have a main method which spins up an HTTP server. Running your application as a simple process eliminates a number of unsavory aspects of Java in production (no PermGen issues, no application server configuration and maintenance, no arcane deployment tools, no class loader troubles, no hidden application logs, no trying to tune a single garbage collector to work with multiple application workloads) and allows you to use all of the existing Unix process management tools instead. Jersey for REST For building RESTful web applications, we’ve found nothing beats Jersey (the JAX-RS reference implementation) in terms of features or performance. It allows you to write clean, testable classes which gracefully map HTTP requests to simple Java objects. It supports streaming output, matrix URI parameters, conditional GET requests, and much, much more. Jackson for JSON In terms of data formats, JSON has become the web’s lingua franca, and Jackson is the king of JSON on the JVM. In addition to being lightning fast, it has a sophisticated object mapper, allowing you to export your domain models directly. Metrics for metrics The Metrics library rounds things out, providing you with unparalleled insight into your code’s behavior in your production environment.