Ruby on Rails frontend and Java backend architecture?

I am building a Ruby on Rails webapp and it is great for the web front end, display, what the user sees etc. But I want request from a user that involves some heavy processing to be done inside a Java backend layer.

So my question what do you think is the best approach for joining these two layers up? I can think of two approaches:

1. Building up the request into a JSON object in the Ruby on Rails layer and using RabbitMQ to send it as a message to the Java backend layer which sends another JSON object back in a message as a response. I tend to lean more towards this approach as there a nice RabbitMQ clients for Ruby and Java.

2. Have a my Java layer running on a web server(such as Tomcat or maybe Netty?) that accepts HTTP requests from the Ruby on Rails layer and sends the response back through the server using HTTP?

Note any persistence will be handled by the Java layer also.

Any more ideas or and/or comments on the above two ideas would be great.

Thanks.

via Chebli Mohamed