Ruby & rails

by
Nicholas Belotti

What is ruby
Ruby is an object orientated scripting language. In
Ruby...everything is an object!
Ruby was released in 1995 by Yukihiro matz Matsumoto
Mass acceptance was gained by 2006 and it ranks #9 in
use of all programming languages. (Due in large part to
the gem known as rails.)
It is supported by a large volunteer community
Distributed under the Ruby license (a GPL extended
hybrid)

What is Rails
Rails is an open source
framework for creating
web applications.
Created by David
Heinemeier Hansson in
2003
When people say Ruby,
many times they mean
Ruby-on-Rails
(RoR)

What is Rails
Rails facilitates the setup
of a model-view-controller
(MVC) framework
Uses the MIT license
It is a add-on library
written in Ruby for Ruby.
(library is known as a gem
in Ruby-speak).

Model-View-Controller
RoR forces the implementation of MVC
At the heart of standards-based web application
development
It separates the data, the presentation, and the
code
MVC encourages best practices

Model

The model is simply the data and associated

database.
Rails works with almost any database with very
little need of coding or SQL knowledge

View

The view is the presentation or how the

page/application is presented to the web
client/viewer
It is a concept embraced by RoR as well as other
programming environments

Controller

The controller is the code that interacts with the

view and the model
It controls what is done programmatically and
what events occur when a user interacts with the
site

The Governing Standards

Body
Both Ruby and Rails are a completely free,
community supported effort
Volunteer - anyone can contribute
Ruby & Rails - Have separate but similar
organization of core supporters with a large
group of non-core or secondary supporters

Advantages/Disadvantage
s
Ruby is open source and as such, comes with an
open source support model
If something is broken, you can request from the
community or fix it yourself
Ruby itself is very easy to learn
RoR provides a means of rapid development of
web-based applications

Robustness
There is not too much you cannot accomplish with
RoR as far as web design
RoR is a tool
You can use tools to build great things
How any tool is used is paramount!

Pervasiveness
Since 2006, Ruby-on-Rails has become very
popular among web developers
Ruby is #9 in use world wide out of all
programming languages
Wide acceptance among web programming teams
using agile development
Not as prevalent as java or php but rapidly gaining
support

Interoperability
RoR is highly extensible
The Rails framework provides simplified interfaces
with powerful javascript libraries
prototype
scriptaculous

RoR provides easy implementation and

connectivity of almost any database

Interoperability
Makes proper use of many web standards
CSS
XML
AJAX
Javascript

RoR provides easy implementation and connectivity of almost any

database
RoR is available on most platforms
Can be implemented with other technologies such as Adobes Flex

Community Support
Community support of both Ruby and Rails is
amazing!
It is the community support that is helping to
make RoR nearly ubiquitous in web development
Information and solution on how to accomplish
a task are shared in numerous channels
RailsCast - a weekly podcast that addresses
various topics
www.ruby-lang.org and www.rubyonrails.org

Support/Stability
Active development is still taking place in rails as
we speak
Solutions are committed to the code base on a
daily basis by the core team as well as group of
over 1,400 volunteers
Unlike its parent language, rails is changing and
evolving rapidly as standards go
Stability is is not a major concern

Maintainability
Due to the structured nature of the MVC,
maintainability of a site is almost trivial
DRY - dont repeat yourself is a best practice in
RoR
Once a site is designed, it can be frozen to a
particular version of rails to avoid problems
associated with updates

Ease of Use
Ruby is easy to use and learn
Especially true if you know other scripting
languages such as perl or php
Rails has a learning curve but the payoff is more
than worth the effort
Ease of site maintenance
Forces MVC

Security
As a programming language, ruby itself is secure
As implemented in a website using the rails
framework, it is also secure. Most security issues
are implemented by the programmer due to:
Poor programming
Inexperience

What it is used for

RoR can be used for just about any web design
project to create a site.
Web applications and sites that use and interact
with persistent data
It seamlessly pulls together other web standards
such as javascript, AJAX, mySQL
Seamlessly works with XML

Who is Using RoR

Many well known sites

are built on RoR
Hulu
Twitter
Github

Where is it all headed?

Ruby on Rails is still rapidly gaining acceptance among
Web programmers and designers.
The rails framework and methodology has started and
encouraged other similar projects based on other
programming languages
cakePHP - A php-based approach at implementing
MVC functionality
There is room for improvement but RoR is a welcome
web standard that should be here for some time

RoR in Action
Example Site

Thank you
Questions or Comments