Grails + CouchDB

Apache CouchDB is a schema-free document store that uses HTTP GETs, PUTs, and DELETEs instead of SQL SELECTs, INSERTs, and DELETEs. It speaks JSON fluently instead of tables, columns, and rows. It uses JavaScript Map/Reduce functions instead of SQL for the query language. It offers effortless replication among distributed CouchDB instances.

“CouchDB is built of the Web. I’ve never seen software that so completely embraces the philosophies behind HTTP.” Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Django Developer

If you want to get a room full of programmers all riled up, just casually drop the word, “NoSQL.” To some, NoSQL means, “death to all antiquated, 1970s-era persistence solutions!” Others take a more pragmatic approach – “Not Only SQL” means that while relational databases are suitable for some applications, there is an emerging crop of equally viable (and interesting) persistence strategies out there.

And how does Grails – a web framework that is tightly coupled to relational databases via GORM (the Grails Object-Relational Mapping API) and Hibernate – deal with a non-relational document store behind the scenes? I guess that you'll just have to show up to find out, won't you? If you're new to Grails, new to CouchDB, or both, this talk offers an exploration into each technology and how they can be teased into working together.

About Scott Davis

Scott Davis is the founder of ThirstyHead.com, a training company that specializes in Groovy and Grails training.

Scott published one of the first public websites implemented in Grails in 2006 and has been actively working with the technology ever since. Author of the book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and in 2009, Practically Groovy), Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development.

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