For the past couple years, Ruby on Rails has enjoyed near cult status among programmers who converted to Ruby from Java.
Rails, as the combination of the Ruby language and the Rails framework is commonly called by its coder fans, has always been touted as easier to work with than Java. And Clinton Begin, software consultant and creator of the iBATIS SQL-centric framework for Java even told SearchSOA that Rails is "a more enjoyable platform to work on." However, Begin who has worked with both languages, said he couldn't endorse the claim that working in Rails is ten times faster than Java when interviewed for Is Ruby on Rails ready for enterprise SOA?
You don't hear every day that a programming language is a joy to work with but that is the kind of enthusiasm surrounding Rails.
But if Rails is fun it is not a toy, said Bruce Tate, an early supporter of the combination of Rails and REST for scaleable enterprise application development.
In another of our Rails articles, How Ruby on Rails and REST go together, Mike Clark, author of "Advanced Rails Recipes: 84 New Ways to Build Stunning Rails Apps" said that the latest release of Rails was built with REST in mind.
"So when you're working with Rails 2 today and you're using the facilities inside of Rails, things like Scaffolding to put up a Web application really quickly, all the code generation in Rails is building a RESTful application," Clark said. He noted that David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Rails, got the "REST bug" while developing Rails 2 and made it integral to the release.
William Brogden has written a detailed technical tip on the rise of RESTful Rails development to challenge traditional SOAP-based Web services for SOA. He noted that the strong interest in Rails has led to its incorporation in the Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs.
If you want to see how all the current service-oriented buzzwords are coming together, read Web 2.0 resume app leverages SOA, Rails, cloud computing about a company called VisualCV Inc. It's a startup with an SOA philosophy provided by alums from webMethods that is creating an online multimedia resume portal service developed with Rails and utilizing cloud computing from Amazon.com.
These stories and more articles and tips on working with these technologies can be found on our new Rails page.
