The Groovy project (http://groovy.codehaus.org) have released version 1.1 of the dynamic language that, for the first time, allow a dynamic language to access the full capabilities of Sun’s Java EE 5.0 specifications. With support for annotations and generics Groovy can be used to write Java Persistence API (JPA) compliant beans, JSR-181 Web Services and inter-operate with all parts of the EJB 3.0 specification.

Featuring dynamic capabilities of languages like Ruby and Python combined with enterprise features offered in the Java realm, Groovy is proving a compelling offering for organisations looking to adopt dynamic language runtimes. Groovy offers a neat Java-like syntax based off the Java 5.0 grammar with extended capabilities to support powerful features such as closures, meta-programming and high level constructs for lists, maps and regular expressions.

Groovy is also used within Grails, a dynamic web application framework based on Java EE technology. Grails is one of a number of frameworks paving the way to easier web development on the Java EE platform, offering a full MVC stack including Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) and an extensible plug-in system.

The upcoming Grails eXchange conference (http://grails-exchange.com), based in London features an array of talks from leading figures in the Groovy & Grails community about the possibilities offered by this exciting language and web platform.