“Grails Persistence with GORM and GSQL” has gone public

Maybe you have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet on the blog. Maybe you’re on the Grails-User or Grails-Dev mailing list and have been wondering where all my questions about the corner cases of GORM have originated. Maybe you’ve been watching my GitHub work and noticing it’s trailed off recently. Or maybe this will come as a complete surprise to you.

In any case, I’ve been working on a secret project. That project is no longer secret: I am almost finished with a book for APress called Grails Persistence with GORM and GSQL. The book is basically an account of the corner cases and advanced usage of GORM that I learned while working on Autobase, plus a fair bit more. With one exception¹, I really hate those books where the author simply repackaged the manual, and so I’m working hard to make sure the book has substantial value even to those who RTFM. The book also contains a lot of sample code and unit tests so the reader can be assured that I’m not lying to them when I’m asserting how things work. The code also means that if there’s a “gotcha” or a dependency, the reader can see it clearly (the Grails manual, like all manuals, has a knack for brushing such subtleties under the rug).

The book has also inspired/funded research into another Grails plugin, affectionately called GORM Labs, which is basically my vehicle for trying out ideas that I may later pitch as patches to the core Grails team.

¹The exception is the blue camel book. It repackages the man pages, but with more pizazz and details. And you just can’t hate a book with a camel on the cover.