Why does RoR interest us?

1. 8th February 2007

2. Why does RoR interest us? • Learn “new” concepts and terms. • Look at “new” architecture. • Find out what is good and what is dubious. • May well come across RoR or a Rails-like framework in near future. • May want to learn an object-oriented language relatively painlessly. • RoR is easy to install, learn and use. You might want to try it out for yourself! 8th February 2007

3. Executive Summary • A lot of hype (many evangelists) • Some dubious claims • Some very good, new concepts • Some old concepts with new names • Ruby camp - humble • Rails camp - arrogant • Still missing some essential tools • Rails techniques can certainly be applied elsewhere • Surprisingly large tools and software base • But Ruby and Rails are each very powerful in their own right 8th February 2007

4. At First Sight • Can only be used for web-based, specifically HTML-based, applications • Designed for small to medium CRUD-based applications • Cross-platform • Can use same tools and middleware on Windows, Linux and OS X. • Easy-install packages for Eclipse (with RADRails and Ruby editor plugins), MySQL, Apache, and other Eclipse plugins, eg Subversion. 8th February 2007

5. Books • Beyond Java- Bruce Tate (evangelist) • Programming Ruby (The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide)- Dave Thomas • Ruby Cookbook- Carlson & Richardson • Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers)- Thomas, Hansson, Breedt and Clark • Rails Recipes- Chad Fowler • Ruby on Rails (Up and Running)- Tate & Gibbs [160 pages] 8th February 2007

6. Other References • Ruby home page http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ • Ruby Central http://www.rubycentral.com/ • Rails home page http://www.rubyonrails.org/ • Wikipedia entries on Ruby and Ruby on Rails 8th February 2007

7. Available Information 8th February 2007

8. History of Ruby • 1993, Feb 24: Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz") started work on Ruby • 1993, Summer: First "Hello, world!" program • 1995, December: First release 0.95 • 1996, December: 1.0 is released • 1999: Supposedly overtakes Python in Japan • 2000: The first official newsgroup • 2000-2001: Several books published • 2003, August 4: 1.8.0 is released 8th February 2007

9. History of Rails • Developed by David Heinemeier Hansson as part of an application called Basecamp. • 2004, July: Released the framework as open source • 2005, Feb: Shared the commit rights • 2005, Dec: Version 1.0 released • 2006, Mar: Version 1.1 released • 2007, Jan: Version 1.2 released 8th February 2007

10. A Ruby Example class Account attr_reader :balance #accessor protected :balance def initialize(balance) @balance = balance end def greater_balance_than(other) return @balance > other.balance end end 8th February 2007

11. A Peak at Rails . 8th February 2007

12. Basics • Ruby - fully object oriented • Rails - full stack framework (sort of) • ActionView, ActionController, ActiveRecord • AJAX using script.aculo.us JavaScript libraries • Uses rake (like make or Ant) • Can use an interpreter to try out Ruby commands 8th February 2007

13. Ruby on RailsRequest Flow 8th February 2007

14. Terms and Concepts • Duck Typing • DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) • MVC (Model-View-Controller) • Model2 - stateless web apps • Metaprogramming • Convention Over Configuration • Scaffolding 8th February 2007

15. Deployment Environments • Development, Test and Production • Each has its own, default runtime settings • One database for each • Schema Migrations • Manages the schemas and any changes • Keeps track of a list of migrations • Each migration has version number • Can modify schema without losing data • Can migrate schema through test and production • Can make or undo the schema change 8th February 2007

16. Automated Testing • RoR generates default test cases to test each method in each class • Uses assertions to test results against expected values • Test data refreshed on start of test • Fixtures - contain your test data • Unit Tests - for testing models • Functional Tests - for testing controllers • Integration Tests - for higher level scenarios • Functional and Integration Tests check Http responses • ZenTest and Selenium 8th February 2007

17. Configuration • Uses Convention over Configuration, and Reflection • Therefore very little configuration compared to other frameworks • ActiveRecord configuration can use SQL • Uses YAML (easy to read) rather than XML development: adapter: oci host: 192.168.0.50/examplesid username: exampleuser password: examplepass 8th February 2007

18. Web 2.0 Features from wikipedia • Rich Internet application techniques, optionally Ajax-based • CSS • XHTML markup and Microformats • RSS/Atom • Clean and meaningful URLs • Folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds for example) • Wikis, Weblogs, Mashups • REST or XML Webservice APIs 8th February 2007

19. Other Rails-Like Frameworks • Groovy: Groovy on Rails -> Grails • Java: Trails • PHP: PHP on Rails -> PHP on TRAX • ASP.NET: Monorail (Beta 4) • Python: TurboGears (well, sort of) This is another language/framework to watch out for. 8th February 2007

20. Disadvantages • No big corporate backer • Very few expert Ruby programmers, and universities and TAFEs have not picked it up • Runs slowly (Java ~ 5 times faster but Ruby may be improved by new VM - YARV) • Poor editor support and very slow debugger • No clustering, failover • No two-phase commit • Does not support compound primary keys • Internationalization support is weak • No off-the-shelf reporting tool 8th February 2007

21. Advantages • Standard directory structure for source • Can build prototype very quickly • Can add to and change prototype easily • Can generate scaffolding, if app is more complex, and build on this • Very powerful, high-level commands • Ruby has great short-hand code for common patterns, eg the Value Object • Built in testing, migration, and some version control • Does not constrain the programmer like other frameworks 8th February 2007

22. Positive Signs • Ruby declared TIOBE's Programming Language of the Year, 2006 (10th) • Agile Web Development with Rails - No 3 in Amazon’s Best Books (Computers and Internet) 2006 • JRuby - Ruby on JVM, being developed by SUN • Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will have Ruby and RoR pre-installed • IBM offers a Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails • Oracle have tutorials and a FAQ on RoR 8th February 2007

23. Defections from Java to Ruby • James Duncan Davidson (ANT) • Mike Clark (Pragmatic Automation) • Jason Hunter (Java Servlet Programming) • Bruce Tate (Bitter Java, Spring Dev Notebook) • Dion Almaer (Founder of theserverside.com) • Stuart Holloway (Component Dev for Java) • Justin Gehtland (Better, Faster, Lighter Java) • Glenn Vanderburg (Tricks of the Java Programming Gurus) • David Geary (Graphic Java, Core JSF) 8th February 2007

24. Trivia • Ruby was named after the birthstone of a colleague of Matz (birthstone of July) • Pearl (Perl) is the birthstone of June 8th February 2007

25. RoR in Baby Steps • Read the Wikipedia entries on Ruby and Ruby on Rails • Read the Ruby / Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheet http://www.blainekendall.com/uploads/RubyOnRails-Cheatsheet-BlaineKendall.pdf • Follow instructions to install tools and web server http://ruby.meetup.com/73/boards/view/viewthread?thread=2203432 • Read the book to develop your first app! Ruby on Rails, Up and Running 8th February 2007

26. Conclusions • Can only be used for web-based, specifically HTML-based, applications • Designed for small to medium CRUD-based applications • Cross-platform • A lot of hype (many evangelists) • Some dubious claims, very little expertise • Some very good, new concepts, some old with new names • Still missing some essential tools • Rails-type framework can certainly be applied elsewhere • Surprisingly large tools and software base • Ruby and Rails are each very powerful in their own right • Looks good! 8th February 2007