Java Development Tools

I'm tasked with prototyping a lightweight browser based front end to display consolidated customer information. It needs to be callable from half a dozen disparate and mostly non-Oracle applications. The idea is that each application will have a button that can kick off a browser session to see a data-warehouse sourced view of a customer. Forms10g (where my experience lies) seems too resource heavy for the constant opening/closing of this little application but APEX looks like a good fit with not too steep a learning curve and the guys on the forum thuoght it was well suited. ADF Faces seems to have a steep learning curve given that I don't have any Java experience but a small view-only app like this might be a good place to gain experience useful for more complex apps. My question is whether ADF Faces is a goot fit for this sort of task. If anyone has used ADF Faces and APEX I'd be very grateful for their thoughts.