UPDATE (2007-11-21) JudoScript is still around and still as easy to use as ever. Groovy has a lot of mindshare but JudoScript is simpler to use, I think.

I’ve found an interesting meta-langauge for Java called JudoScript. Here is the first paragraph of that page:

JudoScript is a full-fledged, modern scripting language, built on and for the Java Platform. It seamlessly interacts with Java objects, does most operating system shell tasks with many bells and whistles, supports easy and versatile JDBC scripting, XML scripting, built-in scheduler and many other niceties.