Utilize Java Libraries

Is it possible to utilize java libraries from a RoR application?

I saw some stuff about Web Services (i.e. SOAP), so obviously that is one way.

I also was looking at the JRuby project...

I was just curious how serious the efforts are to integration java and ruby and how that relates to the rails framework.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Webservices are more of a way of interop with services, not libraries as such.

JRuby will eventually probably be the way to interop with other JVM produced libraries, but I'm not sure it's quite ready for prime-time.

What Java library functionality are you trying to get to? There may be a ruby alternative already.