Re:a scripting language that targets the java vm ! (Score 1)

You can package a Grails app as a WAR using the

grails war

command. The WAR can then be deployed to a servlet container (such as Tomcat) or a JEE server (such as JBoss). Ruby on Rails also supports several mechanisms to avoid per-request startup overhead. (The JRuby people are working on deploying Rails apps as WARs...)

I have tried using Groovy for command line utilities and JVM performance has, in fact, been an issue. There are ways such as Nailgun for elminating JVM startup overhead, but Groovy (last I checked) doesn't provide an "out of box" solution.