coming from the PHP-framework symfony (with Apache/MySQL) I would like to dive into the Scala programming language. I already followed a few tutorials and had a look at Lift and Play. Java isn't a stranger to me either. However the past showed that it's easiest to learn things by just doing them.

Currently we have a little - mostly ajax-driven - application build on symfony at my company. My idea is to just build a little project similar to this one which might gets into production in the future.

The app should feature:

• High scalability and performance
• a backend-server
• web-interface
• and a GUI-client

There are plenty of questions arising when I think of this. First of all: Whats the best way to accomplish a easy to maintain, structured base for it? Would it be best to establish a socket based communication between pure-scala server/client and accessing that data via Lift or is building a Lift-app serving as a server and connecting the gui-client (via REST?) the better way?

Furthermore I wounder which database to choose. I'm familiar with (My)SQL but feel like a fool beeing confronted with all these things like NoSQL, MongoDB and more.

Thanks in advance!