By Graeme Rocher

In this talk the Grails project lead, Graeme Rocher, introduces a new way to develop web applications with the Spring framework. The Grails web application framework, based on the Groovy language with powerful Spring underpinnings, is lowering the barrier of entry to Java EE development with Spring.

Through clever use of DSLs and convention-over-configuration Grails dramatically reduces the complexity of web development while still allowing the flexibility of the underlying frameworks such as Spring MVC, Web Flow and Hibernate. This session will guide you through the basics of Grails, and preview its power features such as GORM, GSP and Web Flow.

By Graeme Rocher

Domain specific languages (DSL) are becoming increasingly prominent with the rise of dynamic languages like Groovy and Ruby. In this talk Graeme Rocher, Grails Project Lead, introduces two interesting use cases from the Grails framework: A Spring Configuration DSL and a Spring Web Flow DSL using Groovy.

In the first demonstration the session will show how using Groovy to script your application context can enable dynamic, runtime configuration that allows you application to adapt to its environment and the presence of different libraries.

Finally, Graeme will present a Spring Web Flow DSL that allows simplified construction of flow definitions that go beyond the constraints of the default XML syntax