Stripes is an awesome framework because it lets you build your application quickly and easily, without maintaining configuration files. Typically, you create an action bean (a simple Java class) to do the work and a JSP to display the results. You add validation with annotations. You get built-in type conversion for most common types, and can easily write your own type converters. Interceptors give you a simple way to address crosscutting concerns. In short, I find that it's one of the most simple, intuitive, consistent, powerful and flexible frameworks out there.
For the rest of your stack, it's really up to you. It's easy to integrate Spring, Hibernate, JPA, AJAX, security, unit testing, etc. with Stripes. If you'd like to see some sample code that demonstrates all of this, get the code bundle for the Stripes book and open the index.html file for a list of all the examples. That way, you can get an idea of what a Stripes application looks like.
Best of luck in your project!
