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Scalable and Rapid Application Development Using Grails

Photo of Mike Dalisay
Modified Wednesday, July 24, 2013
by - @ninjazhai
Hi guys! Today we have a guest post from Boni Satani, you can find more about him at the end of this post, please read below!

Shorter time to market web application signifies being ahead of the competition. There are many factors that can contribute in shortening the lead time right from application conceptualization to implementation by increasing developer’s productivity which is the byproduct of the web application framework being used in the development.

There are many web frameworks that claims to develop web applications in weeks. However, the essence of choosing the development framework lies not only in developing quick but scalable applications.

Grails


In my opinion, Grails can fit the role of the right framework for developing quick and scalable applications. The following paragraphs will take you through the details of why Grails is the right choice for developing scalable and rapid applications.

Grails is an open source web development framework powered by Groovy programming language which is based on the Java Virtual Machine. Groovy gives benefits of being more productive through single lines of codes and shortens the learning curve. Moreover, Grails is built on software frameworks which includes Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE, JEE), Spring, Hibernate and Quartz allowing developers to easily integrate with other Java codes.

Grails is an MVC framework which is different from other development environments since it has a capability to hide the configuration details and has a ready to run template and custom tags and offers several other benefits to developers which results in reducing the overall time to market and building scalable applications. Let’s see how

Reduced Time to Market


Traditional Development vs. Rapid Application Development

When I say, reduced time to market, it means application development with Grails is quite fast. This happens due to several reasons such as:
  • Support from Other Java Frameworks: Groovy and Grails can be easily integrated with other Java platforms. This helps developers utilize the existing libraries with Groovy easily and quickly which help in processing the development speedily. 
  • Don’t Repeat Yourself: This principle is the base of Grails which means developers can make changes in the application without repeating or rewriting the codes and can concentrate on improving the quality of the application. Moreover, coding in Grails is lean and concise due to which there are fewer lines of codes adding to developer’s productivity. 
  • Convention Over Configuration: Grails works on Convention over Configuration principle which means it makes automatic assumptions as to what classes are needed, enabling developers to reduce the efforts in editing configuration files and managing databases. 
  • Tons of Plugins: Grails comes with tons of plugins which contribute in the core development. If you want to configure or integrate anything, you can do it right away with readily available plugins which reduces development time. 
  • Test Integration: Apart from these, you can easily integrate testing frameworks in your existing development cycle to test the applications simultaneously and reduce the overall development time.

Scalability


Applications developed in Grails are much more scalable and robust since Grails is based on Spring framework which is considered as a scalable framework in the enterprise world. Besides there are several other factors that contribute in making scalable applications with Grails.
  • Caching: Grail supports good caching solutions such as EhCache, MemCache and Guava library which provides an ability to cluster and make the applications available across multiple application services.
  • 'Enterprisey' & Cloud Tools: Using these tools, you can take your applications to the cloud very easily and make your applications accessible from any corner of the world.
All these features and benefits of Grails helps in making Grails the most preferable web framework for developing scalable applications in no time.

If you are a developer and looking for exploring a new technology for developing rapid applications, I would suggest you to try your hands at Grails. You can quickly learn its development architecture in a few hours by just referring a book and I promise you will be able to build fully functional web applications like never before using Grails.

You can also take a look at our whitepaper on Grails: Accelerating J2EE Application Development which gives in depth insight into how Grails helps in rapid J2EE Application development.

About Author:

Boni Satani is a Java Technology Consultant working with Cygnet Infotech. He has undertaken various Projects including Java Web Application Development and J2EE Application Development. You can connect with him over twitter at @bonirulzz
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