Comparing Grails Vs. Rails Both the frameworks have their own pros and cons. While Rails is highly mature with presence since 10+ years and has a larger community, Grails is preferred due to ease of deployment and development as well as productivity. Choosing between the two depends on the requirements, the intensity of the development project and the features you are looking in a particular framework. - Go for Grails – if you want to leverage your existing Java skills or have developers experienced in Java - Go for Rails – if your developers are more accustomed with Ruby

1. Presented by
Comparing
GrailsVs. Rails

2. INTRODUCTION TO RAILS
 Rails is an open source web application development framework
which runs on Ruby programming language.
 Founded by David Hansson, Rails was first released in July 2004.
 Rails enables creating database-driven websites with its out-of-
the-box features such as convention over configuration, don’t
repeat yourself, scaffolding, etc.
 Rails uses a programming pattern called MVC (Model View
Controller) that separates the business logic and presentation,
adding to the ease of development and maintenance of codes.

3. INTRODUCTION TO GRAILS
 Grails, originally known as Groovy on Grails was released in
2008 and is now owned byVMware.
 It is one of the most popular open source Java web development
frameworks built on J2EE, Spring and Hibernate.
 Grails uses Groovy which is an agile, object oriented & dynamic
programming language for the JavaVirtual Machine.
 It is considered as a highly productive framework power packed
with features like convention over configuration, reusability,
scaffolding, don’t repeat yourself; that help developers speed up
the entire development process.

4. SIMILARITIES BETWEEN GRAILS & RAILS
Both Grails and Rails are popular open source web development frameworks. Although being on separate
platforms, both Grails and Rails share common grounds in the following ways:
 Both are used for rapid application development
 Both are easy to configure and productive
 Both encourage testing and are ideal for test driven projects
 Both work on principles of convention over configuration, scaffolding and don’t repeat yourself (DRY)
 Both support multi-lingual content
 Both can be deployed asWAR files

5. FEATURES GRAILS RAILS
Programming Language Groovy Ruby
Apps Servers Tomcat, Jboss,Weblogic, Jetty, & GlassFish FastCGI, Jboss Portal, Mongrel & JRuby+GlassFish
Approach Domain oriented Database oriented
Object Role Modeling Hibernate ActiveRecord
Language Supports dynamic as well as static typing Only offers dynamic typing
Tooling Spring Tool Suite Lacks tooling support
Testing Frameworks JUnit, Mockito and Powermock Rspec and Cucumber
Thread Support Native Poor
Despite of several similarities, Grails and Rails have been differentiated on many grounds. Both the
frameworks due to separate architectural design, programming language and other variables are highly
different from each other.
GRAILSVS. RAILS

6. FACEOFF: GRAILSV/S RAILS
FEATURES GRAILS RAILS
Infrastructure Grails is a heavy framework and hence requires
powerful computers
Rails is a lightweight framework and works well with
computers with mediocre memory
Learning Curve The learning curve of Grails is short since it is based
on Groovy which is quite easy to learn
The learning curve in Rails is longer than Grails since
Rails operates in Database model
Maturity Grails is new in the market and hence is not that
mature
Rails is in the market for quite a long time and hence it
is more mature
Set up Grails is easy to setup Rails setup is bit painful (esp. on Windows)
Performance Grails is easy and scalable Lacks scalability
Folder Structure Slightly complex Simpler than Grails
Community Grails has a smaller community Rails community is larger than that of Grails
Libraries Huge list of Java Libraries provide excellent
interoperability
No such Java Libraries
To enable developers choose the best framework of the two, here’s a head-to-head comparison between
Grails and Rails

7. OPPORTUNITIES IN GRAILS OVERTAKING RAILS
Due to the ease of development, scalability and shorter learning curve, enterprises prefer Grails and look for developers
who can work in Grails. Hence, the demand and job opportunities in Grails have expanded in the last few years.
According to one of the surveys conducted by Indeed.com, in the 2nd last quarter of 2008, the job opportunities in
Grails overtook that of Rails.

8. THE CONCLUSION
Both the frameworks have their own pros and cons. While Rails is highly mature with presence since 10+
years and has a larger community, Grails is preferred due to ease of deployment and development as well as
productivity.
Choosing between the two depends on the requirements, the intensity of the development project and the
features you are looking in a particular framework.
 Go for Grails – if you want to leverage your existing Java skills or have developers experienced in Java
 Go for Rails – if your developers are more accustomed with Ruby

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