Last night I attended the MN Ruby Users' Meeting. The topic of interest for me was Groovy on Grails, a Rails-inspired framework for the Java platform based on Spring, Hibernate, Ant+Ivy, SiteMesh and of course Groovy.

Groovy is a dynamic language that compiles to Java byte-code (unlike JRuby in its current state), and some of its most interesting features are closures and its ability to be used as a DSL. It also appears that there is a DSL for Ant, which I would guess is very Rake-like.

The advantages of using Grails over Rails are real: many companies have existing Java infrastructure that they can not afford to simply throw out or run side-by-side with another infrastructure--not even Google will run Rails. There may also be the requirement of transactional (JTA/XA) support, or the need to interact with legacy services using via ESB. As I've explored before, some of these things can indeed be used from Rails using the Java/Ruby Bridge, but that solution does not "seem" like it would hold up well in a high volume application (I've never done any stress testing, prove me wrong); though this still adds the burden of running two infrastructures side by side.

So why not just stick with Servlets or Struts? As Scott Vlaminck put it in his presentation: the "let's knock this this shit out" attitude of the Rails community is coming onto the radar of 'enterprise' project management, and they want a piece of the uber-productivity pie that Rails boasts.

Now if only we could convince them to use the time they'd save to give their developers five day weekends, or 150% raises :)