A look at the changing development landscape and how we may have to rearchitect our Grails applications. Also looks at existing, new, or potential Grails features that can help navigate this new world order.

1. Grails and the World of Tomorrow
Peter Ledbrook
VMware
t: @pledbrook
g: +PeterLedbrook
e: pledbrook@vmware.com

2. NoSQL
HTML5.js
Concurrency
Social
Cloud
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3. HTML5.js
Web sites Applications
Server-side HTML Client-side HTML
Low interactivity High interactivity
No offline Offline
Wikipedia Twitter
3

4. HTML5.js
We’re going this way!
Web sites Applications
Server-side HTML Client-side HTML
Low interactivity High interactivity
No offline Offline
REST + JSON
Backbone.js + Moustache
Is this the end for GSP?
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5. NoSQL
Data the way you want it!
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6. NoSQL
“Everyone has interesting data”
Some guy
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7. Social
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8. Cloud
Ephemeral Easy instance
filesystems creation
Service-oriented
architecture
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9. Concurrency
Responsiveness
Lots of concurrent users
What about all those cores?
Node.js/Vert.x & the Reactor pattern
9

10. 10

11. Where do we go from here?
• Has CRUD still got legs?
• Does even MVC still make sense?
• Or do we need to fundamentally change the way we write apps?
What can Grails do
for me?
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12. A typical Grails app
HTTP
Controller View
Service
GORM/Hibernate
Database
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13. A typical Grails app
HTTP Sticky sessions
OSIVI
Controller View
Domain class
binding
Domain
Service objects
GORM/Hibernate
Relational/object
Database impedance
mismatch
13

14. Fit for purpose?
• CRUD has its place
– Admin UIs
– Quick UIs for complex domain models
• CRUD = dynamic scaffolding
• But beyond CRUD...
• ... what about MVC + ORM?
– Rich UIs + REST don’t need views
– Do UI forms match domain classes?
– Do views require the same information as updates?
– How do we track changes to data?
– Where should validation occur?
14

15. A typical Grails app
HTTP
Disable OSIVI?
Controller View
Command objects?
Don’t let HTTP session
and Hibernate session
mix?
Bind COs to Service @Cacheable, not
domains? 2nd-level cache?
importFrom(Domain)
GORM/Hibernate
Filtering and
transforming
data
Database
15

16. Introducing CQRS
Updates
Store
changes
Concurrency
via event bus
Views
Separate data
stores for queries
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17. Is it too complex?
• PaaS makes it easy to use multiple data stores
• Event bus allows for decoupling
– Easier to understand than Hibernate events
– Search “mirroring” would work!
– Easily extended to external message broker
– Synchronise multiple instances of same app on PaaS
• Querying and updating already separated
– PluginService & PluginUpdateService in grails.org
• Groovy good for data transformations
Conventions and framework
support to make it easier!
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18. How can Grails help - Rich UIs?
URL mappings for REST
JSON & XML converters
Resources (for JS & CSS)
Plugins for different UI libraries
18

19. How can Grails help - NoSQL?
GORM plugins
JSON handling
Schemaless + dynamic lang = good!
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20. How can Grails help - Social?
Spring Social plugin, etc.
Authentication via plugins
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21. How can Grails help - Cloud?
Simplified deployment with plugins
Plugins for PaaS services
Runtime config
21

22. How can Grails help?
22

23. How can Grails help?
Plugins
23

24. How can Grails help?
Plugins
24

25. How can Grails help?
Plugins
25

26. How can Grails help?
Plugins
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27. Plugin platform
Events Security
UI Injection
Conventions Config
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28. Plugin platform
Events Security
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29. Plugin platform
Events Security
• Event bus • API + SPI
• Can integrate with AMQP • Service
• GORM events • Tags
• App lifecycle events
• Custom app events
https://github.com/Grailsrocks/grails-platform-core
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30. Event bus
Update Call REST
Save entity Index read DBs service
Spring Integration Event Bus AMQP
Plugins
Plugins
Plugins Application
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31. Summary
• The way applications are architected will change
– Websites will still be built (GSP not gone yet)
– Not everyone will need the same architecture
– Project archetypes and scaffolding!
• Grails already has many of the features we need
• Plugins can add those
• Plugin platform provides more powerful integration
– Event bus will enable more interesting architectures
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32. More info
• w: http://grails.org/
• f: http://grails.org/Mailing+Lists
• e: pledbrook@vmware.com
• t: pledbrook
• b: http://blog.springsource.com/author/peter-ledbrook/
32

33. Q&A