What is Groovy? What is Grails? For those who don’t know about Groovy and Grails, you are lucky because I’m about to explain Groovy and Grails and how powerful they are in web application technology. I will also give you some examples to help you understand and start using them!
What is Groovy?
“Groovy is a relatively new dynamic language that can either be interpreted or compiled and is designed specifically for the Java platform.” (Beginning Groovy and Grails From Novice To Professional Apress). Groovy also builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk.
What is Grails?
Grails is an open source web framework for the Java platform, using either Java or Groovy as languages, and also a complete development platform to build web applications. Grails is an MVC framework but not like other MVC Java frameworks — Grails domain classes are automatically persistable and can even generate the underlying database schema. Because Grails is designed for Groovy and Java, it’s easier for other Java developers to integrate with other Java open source frameworks like Maven, GWT (Google Web Toolkit), XMLRPC, etc.
Grails features:
- Convention Over Configuration
- Unit Testing
- Scaffolding
- Object Relational Mapping
- Plug-Ins
Because Grails is also bundled and integrated with other Java open source projects like:
- Groovy
- Spring Framework
- Hibernate
- SiteMesh
- Ajax Framework
- Jetty
- HSQLDB
- JUnit
With the power of Java plus open source Java frameworks with great community support, so what are you waiting for?