A team of Java-centric technologists from VMware have come up with a list of 10 really cool things you can do with Java and vFabric SQLFire. Here they are: 

1. Achieve horizontal, near-linear scale using Java (or .NET) via ANSI SQL-92 for any existing data store. For example, you can connect existing Grails apps by changing two lines.
2. Since SQLFire is written in Java, you can use Java stored procedures in the same memory and processing space that database operations are performed with NO additional overhead.
3. You can run Hadoop-style, map-reduce jobs with high-speed Java-based, data-aware stored procedures.
4. SQLFire (and the stored data) can be embedded in Java applications with a shared process heap for things like session state, web content, or back-office data.
5. You can use SQLFire with Spring Batch to speed up large volumes of calculations, transforms, or validations and do batch data loads at high speed…like 8 million rows in 88 seconds.
6. You can migrate multiple, existing physical/logical databases into the “data fabric” and still view a single, logical database from a “normal” connection while also gaining access to any other data on “the fabric.” For example, you could build a new, real-time Java-based web app that accesses CRM, web profile, order, inventory, and social profile data from “the fabric.”
7. You can run the data fabric on cost-effective, virtual, Java-optimized infrastructure and dynamically or elastically grow and shrink based on need, SLA, or even business unit.
8. You can provide data services with active-active clustering across a WAN.
9. Your data store is highly available by default.
10. You can get sample code bits like integrating SQLFire with Spring Petstore on GitHub or download the entire SpringTrader Reference Architecture, which has an HTML5-driven presentation layer interfacing through REST/JSON to a middle-tier on Spring with an AMQP message broker, and a JDBC connection to SQLFire.

For more information on each item and several diagrams, you can read the entire article here.

Great to know it's easy to connect to Grails, I suppose a driver and the datasource need to be changed?

From a VMware expert:

You need to update grails-app/conf/DataSource.groovy changing the connection details and Hibernate dialect. For example:

dataSource {

pooled = true

driverClassName = "com.vmware.sqlfire.jdbc.ClientDriver"

username = "..."

password = "…"

url="jdbc:sqlfire://hostname:port/"

dialect="com.vmware.sqlfire.hibernate.SQLFireDialect"

}

Making sure the sqlfire client JAR is on the classpath (best is to update BuildConfig.groovy to resolve the dependency from Maven, either wise drop the JAR file into the 'lib' directory')