When comparing Dropwizard vs AIDA/web, the Slant community recommends Dropwizard for most people. In the question“What are the best backend web frameworks?” Dropwizard is ranked 28th while AIDA/web is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose Dropwizard is:
The application can be run and debugged from the IDE without the need to recompile or redeploy the WAR file. This is because a Dropwizard web application creates on main program which starts the jetty container.
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Pros
Pro Enhanced productivity and less timewasting
The application can be run and debugged from the IDE without the need to recompile or redeploy the WAR file. This is because a Dropwizard web application creates on main program which starts the jetty container.

Pro Application metrics integrated into the framework
Dropwizard comes with application metrics integrated out of the box. These metrics provide a lot of useful information such as request/response time.
For example, to get the execution time of a method, the @Timed
annotation is used.

Pro Quick project bootstrap
Starting a project with Dropwizard si very easy and bootstraping is quick and painless. All that's needed is a single dependency added in the pom.xml
file and it's ready to go.
Pro Conceptually simple, yet complete
Most frameworks seem to tend towards conceptually simple, but also stripped down (such as Python's Flask), or go the other way and be very fully featured, yet complex. AIDA/web, however, manages to give a programmer a lot of expressive power, while remaining conceptually simple -- an afternoon will get you building websites, and you'll feel comfortable with AIDA/web in just a week or so.
Pro Smalltalk
Program your web app in Smalltalk, an enjoyable and easy language to use. Smalltalk was the language to inspire modern Object-Oriented programming and pioneered many of the programming concepts used today, such as MVC.
Cons
Con Does not allow a lot a freedom of choice
Dropwizard removes a lot of freedom that the developer may have with other frameworks because of the fact that it tries to do everything itself. It chooses the best Java libraries for the job required, without allowing the developer much choice.
Con Relatively inactive
At the time of this writing, AIDA/web is 26 years old (first created in 1996). While maintaining pace with modern technologies (REST, Javascript, etc.), the community is small. You might find it difficult to find timely help, find resources and tutorials, etc.
