Tampa Jvm User Group

July's meeting had an excellent turnout with 17 people in attendance for the meeting. First, the presentation provided an overview of scripting in Java in general. Then we explored the different Groovy language features and API for lists, maps, and control constructs. Many people showed interest in the Groovy's closure construct.

The last part of the meeting was focused on GRAILS (formerly Groovy on Rails). This is a "Coding by Convention" framework based on Groovy. We had a live demo of Grails and within 10 minutes, I was able to create a functioning CRUD app consisting with 2 screens with no coding. This is an interesting tool that will surely give Java developers access to easy web development.

Materials for this presentation will be made available soon.

We look forward to see you at our August meeting next month. Bring a friend.

Special Thanks:
CGA.Net - Meeting Facilities
RJ Salicco - Organization

Vladimir Vivien

In the next release of Java (Mustang Edition), scripting engines will be first-class components. You will be able to load and execute script files within your own code. This is an important development because the heavyweight Java component guys are recognizing the importance of agile scripting. It's also due to the growing competition that Java is facing from pure scripting camps such as PHP, Python, and now Ruby.

In the July Tampa Java User Group meeting, we will get Groovy! We will explore the Groovy scripting engine that is built on Java and is 100% Java-compatible. From it's website, Groovy is described as

"... an agile scripting language ... inspired by languages like Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk ..."

We will take an introductory look at the more interesting syntactical Groovy features such as lists, maps, closures, and some usefull Groovy classes. We will also look at some of the tools/features gaining Groovy praises including:

• GroovyMarkup: Easy Xml development
• Groovy RPC:
  
• Groovlets/Templates: PHP-style web development.
• Groovy SQL: No fuss DB development
• Embedding Groovy: Executing scripts within your own Java code
  
• Grails: Groovy on Rails (yes a port of Ruby on Rails)
  

... and other important features and components.

Join us on the last Tuesday of the month and bring a friend. We will have plenty of code samples and you will gain a great understanding of Groovy and see how you can use it in your next project.

Meeting Detail
Speaker: Vladimir Vivien
Date: 07/25/06
Networking: 6:30 pm
Presentation: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Location:
GCA Technologies Solution
4919 Memorial Hwy. Suite 150
Tampa, FL 33634
Google Map

The June 2006 presentation materials are now available. You can download the source code and the presentation file from the link below. The source code is provided as an Eclipse project. However, you should be able to import it into other IDE's including NetBeans and others. To resolve all jar dependencies, review the build.xml file. It has a list of all jars needed to run the project.

Download Files:
PDF Presentation
Source Code

If you have questions, let us know.

Vladimir