Adventures in Groovy

Lately my colleague Udo has been busy adding Groovy support to Z2. For those who are not aware, Groovy is a scripting language that is deeply rooted in the Java platform. While Groovy differs in Syntax, Groovy classes interoperate seamlessly with Java classes.

The cool aspect of integrating Groovy, apart from Groovy itself, is that the integration is extremely smooth and required no adaptation of Z2 as such. It’s all just yet another compiler. Using the ability to use Groovy code or any mix of Groovy code with Java code just means add the Groovy Add-On  to your system and to add the declaration

java.compile.order = groovy

to a Java component declaration. That’s it.

We prepared a little sample that highlights just a few capabilities such as

• Mixing Java and Groovy
• Using Groovlets and GSPs
• Using the Groovy-based Spock test specification framework

Check it out at Groovy in Z2 sample.

Upcoming Talks

There are two talks on Z2 upcoming in the near term: In only two weeks from now I will be talking about “Stop wasting your time with Java build tools” on May 11th at Codemotion 2013 in Berlin. Shouldn’t be too hard to guess what that talk will be about.

Secondly, we are very happy to be present at the Entwicklertag 2013 on June 5th in Karlsruhe where I will be talking about “Buildfrei skalieren für Big Data mit Z2” which is all about how Big Data application scale-out benefits from the “self-distributing” approach of Z2. There will be plenty of time to meet and talk.

Update (2013-05-16): Here is the codemotion slide dec.