Beginning Groovy, Grails and Griffon

Web frameworks are playing a major role in the creation of today's most compelling web applications, because they automate many of the tedious tasks, allowing developers to instead focus on providing users with creative and powerful features. Java developers have been particularly fortunate in this area, having been able to take advantage of Grails, an open source framework that supercharges productivity when building Java–driven web sites. Grails is based on Groovy, which is a very popular and growing dynamic scripting language for Java developers and was inspired by Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk.

Beginning Groovy, Grails and Griffon is the first introductory book on the Groovy language and its primary web framework, Grails. Griffon is also covered. While Grails is the Web framework for building Groovy Web applications, Griffon is the desktop framework for building desktop Groovy applications. Could Groovy be the new Java? It's light, fast and free (open source).

This book gets you started with Groovy, Grails and Griffon, and culminates in the example and possible application of some real–world projects. You follow along with the development of each project, implementing and running each application while learning new features along the way.

What you’ll learn

• Understand the fundamentals of the open source, dynamic Groovy scripting language and the Grails web framework.
• Capitalize upon Grails’ well–defined framework architecture to build web applications faster than ever before.
• Improve your web application with cutting–edge interface enhancements using Ajax.
• Use Grails’ object–relational mapping solution, GORM, to manage your data store more effectively than ever before.
• Take advantage of Groovy to create reporting services, implement batch processing, and create alternative client interfaces.
• Deploy and upgrade your Grails–driven applications with expertise and ease.
• Discover an alternative client in Groovy as well.
• Explore the Griffon framework for creating Groovy-based desktop applications.

About the Authors

Christopher Judd is president and primary consultant for Judd Solutions, LLC. He is an international speaker, open source evangelist, leader of the Central Ohio Java Users Group, and coauthor of Enterprise Java Development on a Budget (Apress, 2003). He has spent 12 years architecting and developing software for Fortune 500 companies in various industries, including insurance, retail, government, manufacturing, and transportation. His focus is consulting, mentoring, and training with Java, Java EE, Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), mobile technologies, and related technologies.

Joseph Faisal Nusairat, author of "Beginning JBoss Seam" and co-author "Beginning Groovy & Grails", is a software developer who has been developing web based applications in the Columbus and Phoenix area since 1997, primarily focused on Java / Groovy development. His career has taken him into a variety of Fortune 500 industries including military applications, data centers, banking, internet security, pharmaceuticals, and insurance. Joseph is a graduate of Ohio University with dual degrees in Computer Science and Microbiology with a minor in Chemistry. Currently, Joseph works as the Groovy Sage at Integrallis Software (integrallis.com).

Jim Shingler is a VP of Application Development for J. P. Morgan Chase. The focus of his career has been using cutting-edge technology to develop IT solutions for the banking, insurance, financial services, and manufacturing industries. He has 16 years of large-scale Java experience and significant experience in distributed and relational technologies.

Vishal Layka has experience of over a decade in Java/Jee. The thesis he was working on for building compilers for dynamic languages propelled his career in dynamic languages. Other than Groovy, his work and research interests involves Clojure, Erlang, Haskell and Scala.