Yes sorry, action is not supposed to contain the business logic. As far as using DAO in the form bean is concerned, its definitely legal. I would still not recommend using DAO in form beans. I'm actually more familiar with
struts 2, and there's no form bean in it (there's model driven concept but its a bit different). You said that you want to populate some properties on page load, I cannot understand what you meant by that. If there is a particular use case where you feel that using DAO in the form bean is the best solution, then you can use it...