Groovy from SQL and templates

Groovy is a real fun! Get some data from database and put it to XML - must be quick-n-dirty :)
Let the table be:

-- Apache Derby ij script
connect 'jdbc:derby:../../myderby;create=true;user=test;password=test';
create table test(
name varchar(20),
age integer,
gender char(1)
);
insert into test values ('John Doe', 55, 'M');
insert into test values ('Diana Smith', 34, 'F');
insert into test values ('Foo Bar', 21, 'M');
disconnect;
exit;

... and the template.txt:

<person>
<name>${name}</name>   
<age>${age}</age>    
<gender>${gender}</gender>  
</person>

.. and now, Groovy rocks! :)

import groovy.sql.Sql
import groovy.text.Template
import groovy.text.SimpleTemplateEngine
import java.io.File

class SQL2XML{
 static void main(args) {
  def file = new File("template.txt")
  def engine = new SimpleTemplateEngine()
  def template = engine.createTemplate(file)
  def sql = Sql.newInstance("jdbc:derby:myderby",
      "test", "test",
      "org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver")                                          
  sql.eachRow("SELECT * FROM TEST") {
      def binding = ["name":"${it.name}",
                      "age":"${it.age}",
                   "gender":"${it.gender}"]
      def result = template.make(binding)
      println result
  }   
 }
}

It seems to me that the dynamic features might be useful for adding customizations to the end-user application.

Apache Derby with Eclipse

I sticked with Apache Derby for simple desktop application development. Derby (or JavaDB) is becoming part of the JDK, so it might be a good long term bet. The Eclipse plug-in appeared quite useful in this case.

The functionality of the plug-in makes the core jar files available in the project. One could run the ij queries just inside Eclipse console and execute custom scripts using a context menu item available via riht-button-click on the target file.