Face a new project imply selecting the tools/technologies you’ll be using during developement.
Here is a brief excursus on what I’ll use.
IDE: Eclipse
Eclipse is a very powerfull IDE, I’m using it every day at work for PHP developing that’s why i feel so comfortable with it. Furthermore Eclipse has born for Java developing so i thing this is the right choice.
DBMS: MySQL
Because it’s free and I know it quite well since I’m using it for more than 6 years, I could choose SQL Server (the one we use at work) but since it is not free and I’m developing on a Mac that’s it. Moreover MySQL has MySQL Workbench which is a very usefull tool form designing/managing databases.
ORM: Hibernate
This is a project requirement, but i would have use it the same as it seems the most used out there and i want to learn it.