Grails is more than just a web framework, it is a complete platform and API for runtime configuration. This talk, by Grails project lead Graeme Rocher, will demonstrate Grails' modular architecture and how to hook into runtime configuration to adapt your application based on its environment and/or the presence of other plug-ins.

The talk will start with an overview of the Grails architecture and then jump into an extended example of how to write your own plug-in. As part of the journey you'll learn how to customize the Grails build system, participate in runtime Spring configuration, add new persistence methods that work with Hibernate and enhance your existing classes through Grails' advanced Groovy Meta-programming system.

Session Topics:

• The Grails Architecture
• Scripting Grails with Gant
• Using Grails' Spring DSL: The BeanBuilder
• Adding new methods, properties and constructors with ExpandoMetaClass
• Packaging, distributing and installing your plug-in

Spring & Hibernate development, although hailed in the past as being "lightweight", is still an XML-centric, configuration heavy approach to web application development. In this talk, by Grails project lead Graeme Rocher, you will discover how you can leverage Spring & Hibernate without ever having to write a line of configuration!

The talk will demonstrate how Grails handles all the heavy lifting by performing runtime configuration based on conventions for you leaving you to focus on your business logic. At the same time you'll discover that none of what Spring & Hibernate provides has been taken away allowing you to leverage what is great about this frameworks from using AOP to mapping onto a legacy database system.

Session Topics:

• The Grails Architecture Overview
• Grails & Spring
• Re-using existing Spring services
• Leveraging Spring AOP
• Lightweight Hibernate with Grails
• Using EJB3 annotations or Hibernate XML to map onto legacy system

Hibernate is an immensely powerful ORM layer with an array of features and mapping options which comes at the cost of complexity. The web application framework Grails ships with an ORM layer that builds of top of Hibernate, but eliminates much of the complexity through clever use of convention and the dynamic features of the Groovy language. Known as GORM, it offers a convention-based mapping strategy that hooks into the Hibernate configuration model and provides an abstraction layer above Hibernate with powerful features like Groovy builders for Criteria, dynamic finders and transaction management through closures.

This talk, by Grails project lead Graeme Rocher, will walk you through the features of GORM and demonstrate how to create different persistence mappings. Once the basics of mapping is understood you'll dive head first into persisting and reading data without ever accessing a Hibernate session!

Session Topics:

• GORM - An Introduction
• Mapping Domain Models with GORM
• Persisting and Reading data
• Querying with Dynamic finders
• Querying with Criteria"