Groovy is an object-oriented programming language for the Java platform. Grails is an open source web application framework. So what is the link between them?
Well, Grails framework is developed in Groovy and both started their journey together in The Groovy Grails Company, which was later acquired by SpringSource in November 2008, which is Pivotal Now.
Now both are separate entities – when the Pivotal joint venture was spun-off by EMC and VMware in April 2013, Groovy and Grails formed part of its product portfolio. Pivotal ceased sponsoring Groovy and Grails from April 2015. That same month, Groovy changed its governance structure from a Codehaus repository to a Project Management Committee (PMC) in the Apache Software Foundation via its incubator. On the other hand founders and senior members of the Grail team joined OCI (Object Computing, Inc.), which became the official sponsor and took over the funding for the Grails project. While Grails core team retains full autonomy as to how the project will be developed and advanced, OCI is committed to increasing the exposure of Grails, and working to integrate Grails technology with other open source infrastructure technologies that OCI supports.
In spite of taking different course; most of the tech world still associate Groovy and Grail together while individually they have their own merits to prosper.
Groovy is basically Java but has dynamic language features like Python, Ruby or Pearl. But unlike others the learning curve is not steep for Groovy making it a more go to solution for Java developer. Groovy uses a Java-like curly-bracket syntax and most Java code is also syntactically valid for Groovy, although semantics may be different.
Most valid Java files are also valid Groovy files and groovy code can be more compact, because it does not require all the elements that Java requires. Groovy 2.0 also support modularity type checking, static compilation, Project Coin syntax enhancements, multi-catch blocks and ongoing performance enhancements using JDK7’s invoke dynamic instruction. Groovy provides native support for various markup languages such as XML and HTML, accomplished via an inline DOM syntax.
Grails on the other hand is built on reused proven technologies like Spring and Hibernate and built a dynamic convention-over-configuration abstraction layer on top of them in order to really streamline the process. It is intended to be a high-productivity framework by following the “coding by convention” paradigm, providing a stand-alone development environment and hiding much of the configuration detail from the developer.
Even though Pivotal has ended support on Groovy & Grails, the technology demand is on rise. Median Salary of a Grails expert is £57,500 Per annum. #BeTheGroovyExpert – get Introduced to Web Application Development with Groovy and Grails training, which teaches Java developers the basics of Groovy and how to use the Grails framework to rapidly create sophisticated web applications.
