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Ruby on Bells: The Ruby-Powered Musical Glass Playing Machine
Ruby on Bells is a demo of the Madrona fork of RAD (Ruby Arduino Development) itself a Ruby bridge to Arduino, an open source electronics prototyping platform. Powered by a simple Ruby script, a set of glasses are hit by small mallets on servos, resulting in a Philip Glass-esque cacophony. It's a compelling demo, and if physical computing intrigues you, the tools available to Ruby and Arduino developers are now mature enough to bring interesting results within easy reach.
A longer "behind the scenes" video explaining how it was put together and how the code looks is also available. The code used is a very simple Ruby-based DSL. Couple this with Giles Bowkett's MIDI generator and you could have a lot of fun.
Join Why The Lucky Stiff (And Others) For an Online “ShoesFest”
You've used Shoes, Why The Lucky Stiff's GUI-app toolkit for Ruby, right? No? You've at least heard of it? (If the answer to this is also no, seriously chastise yourself now.)
Ernest Prabhakar has announced that two online "ShoesFests" will be taking place, involving why the lucky stiff and "friends," with the hope of alluring wannabe hackers (whether on Shoes itself or Shoes-based applications):
The goal of these events is to write and share fun little applications using Shoes, a clever little cross-platform GUI toolkit written in Ruby. This will allow us to test, document, and file bugs on how the various Shoes features work on the different supported platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac), in preparation for our next major release on July 31st, 2008.
No Ruby — or programming — experience is required; we’d love to find out how easy it is for novices to learn Shoes! Of course, if you happen to know the Ruby C API, expert help is always appreciated.
There are two ShoesFests, each taking place for 24 hours, from noon GMT (8am Eastern) on Friday, July 11th, and from noon GMT (8am Eastern) on Friday, July 25th. The venue will be #shoes on the Freenode IRC network (irc.freenode.net).
If spending a day on IRC, asking questions, talking nonsense, helping others, and otherwise hacking away on Shoes and Shoes-based applications with a bunch of exciting people sounds fun to you, make sure to put this Friday in your calendar.
Ruby Featured in User Friendly Comic Strip
A light hearted entry, but Ruby has featured quite significantly in the latest edition of the popular User Friendly comic strip series. Unfortunately, a bearded Perl and Emacs fan gives Ruby the slap down, but what's new?
Update: It seems this comic strip might not be as new as it initially seems.. see comments.
Going To EURUKO 2008 Tomorrow? See You There!
After putting out the call on Ruby Inside in February, the EURUKO European Ruby Conference is breaking all previous records with 300 Rubyists expected to descend on Prague, Czech Republic this weekend (March 29 - 30). The attendee list includes Matz, Koichi Sasada, Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo of the JRuby team, David Black (Ruby for Rails), Dr. Nic, Peter Szinek (scRUBYt!), me (of this place!), and many more. Even David Heinemeier Hansson will be there in spirit, as he’s doing a video session over Skype.
I’ll be on site from Friday night through to Sunday afternoon attending the parties, doing interviews, trying to find out about some of the lesser known exciting Ruby projects people are working on, and generally seeing what people are up to. If you’re going, do say hi! You’ll know who I am because I’ll probably be the only person wearing red shoes and red glasses (yes, it’s a Ruby theme).. The same also applies to the Ruby Fools conference in Copenhagen next Tuesday and Wednesday (April 1-2) where I’ll be doing an “Introduction to Ruby” session. See you there!
I’ll be trying to update Twitter with my location, so if you’re going to be there, feel free to follow me on Twitter (username: peterc) and let’s meet up. I want to do some interviews (video and/or audio) for Ruby Inside and highlight some of the great stuff happening with Ruby here in Europe, so don’t be a stranger.. just come and harass me! It’d also be cool if you comment on this post, just to get an idea of who I’ll be bumping into.
For those unable to attend, I’ll be posting a few summaries of the event over the next few days.
Interesting Ruby Tidbits That Don't Need Separate Posts #12
RubyCamp 2008 in Vancouver, Canada - January 26, 2008
RubyCamp 2008 is a one-day "Ruby camp" in Vancouver, Canada, taking place on January 26, 2008. All are invited, Rubyists and Railers alike, and it runs from 9am to 5pm at "WorkSpace" in downtown Vancouver. There's a lot more about it at the official RubyCamp site. Two "tracks" will be in flow, a traditional conference-style track with speakers giving talks, and a "Hackathon" track taking an un-conference approach where you can just show off your cool application, Ruby tricks, and stuff like that.
Solving Rails Performance Bottlenecks with RM-Manage
Solving Rails Performance Bottlenecks with RM-Manage is an article by enterprise Rails deployment company FiveRuns that looks at how to use their RM-Manage service to, unsurprisingly, deal with bottlenecks in your Rails applications. I'm not familiar with RM-Manage as a user, but the statistics you get back using their interface look pretty interesting. The article has a bunch of screenshots, so check it out.
Java Becoming New COBOL; Ruby Remains New Perl
InfoWorld is reporting that "Java is losing ground to Ruby on Rails" and that "Java is becoming the new COBOL." It cannot be said that the Ruby community is one to gloat, so I shall do it for you.. ha ha! That said, a lot of BDD stories used on Ruby apps nowadays look a little like COBOL so perhaps the bearded men were right after all.
Scotland On Rails - One Day Left To Submit Proposals
Scotland on Rails, a valiant attempt at a Scottish RailsConf, is all set to go ahead on April 4 - 5, 2008, and there's just one day until the deadline to submit a proposal for giving a tutorial or session. If you can knock out a proposal in 24 hours, you could be sharing a stage with Ruby bigwigs like Jim Weirich, Joe O'Brien and David A. Black! If you'd rather just go and heckle, then you can join the conference's mailing list from the official site.
Building a Ruby Web Service On Facebook's Thrift
Ruby Web Services with Facebook's Thrift is a great post by Ilya Grigorik that walks you through building a Web service and client using Ruby and the newly released cross-language Thrift library from Facebook.
RubyRags: Ruby and Rails Powered Clothing
RubyRags is a new clothing company that specializes in shirts for Ruby and Ruby on Rails junkies. It's rare I ever see anything commercial worth getting a whole post to itself here at Ruby Inside but there's clearly some thought and sincerity behind this. The designs so far are really slick. I'd certainly love to see a WhyTheLuckyStiff designed one in the future though. Shirts are around the $20 mark, plus shipping, and there's a 10% discount for Rails Core contributors.
MySQL vs MS SQL Server
This is a wiki page. If you have updates or corrections, please apply them to the page.
Comparing the open source MySQL database server against the proprietary database server “MS SQL Server” from Microsoft.
Performance Comparison
The Transaction Processing Performance Council is an independent organization that specifies the typical transactions (transactions used in inventory control systems, airline reservation systems and banking systems) and some general rules these transactions should satisfy. The TPC produces benchmarks that measure transaction processing and database performance in terms of how many transactions a given system and database can perform per unit of time, e.g., transactions per second or transactions per minute.
As of June 2006, SQL Server 2000 holds the third position in the OLTP Test in price by performance results and Microsoft SQL Server 2005×64 holds the first place. However MySQL does not participate in these tests, so it is difficult to make a head on comparison using TPC benchmarks.
In some benchmarks, MySQL has proven to be faster in its basic table format, MyISAM. MyISAM databases are very compact on disk and place little demand on CPU cycles and memory. MySQL can run on Windows without complaint but performs better on UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Additional performance gains can be had by using MySQL on a 64-bit processor, because MySQL uses an abundance of 64-bit integers internally. Much of the very busy Yahoo! Finance portal and Slashdot use MySQL as a back-end database.
It’s worth noting that both systems will work well within either .NET or J2EE architecture. Similarly, both will benefit from RAID, and both will perform best if the data store is on a hard drive or array that is solely dedicated to that purpose.
Given the lack of a standard benchmark upon which to compare the two databases, it’s not possible to conclusively rule on which database has the upper hand in performance.
Features Comparison
Regardless of other differences, the SQL Server 2000 and MySQL have a widely different feature set.
SQL Server 2000 and MySQL v5.0 limits
Although many of the limits placed by the database are for the purists, some are important for everyone to take note.
Some of these built-in limitations may be crucial for database design. Varchar size especially can be problematic, as often stored data such as comments or articles may be forced into BLOBs or TEXT columns. Total row size is also important for this reason.
| Feature | SQL Server 2000 | MySQL v5.0 (MyISAM) |
| Column name length | 128 | 64 |
| Index name length | 128 | 64 |
| Table name length | 128 | 64 |
| Max indexes per table | 250 | 64 (128 with recompile) |
| Index length | 900 | 1024 |
| Max index column length | 900 | 255 |
| Columns per index | 16 | 16 |
| Max char size | 8000 | 255 |
| Max varchar size | 8000 | 65532 |
| Max blob size | 2147483647 | 2147483647 |
| Max columns in GROUP BY | Limited by number of bytes (8060) | 64 |
| Max columns in ORDER BY | Limited by number of bytes (8060) | 64 |
| Tables per SELECT statement | 256 | 31 |
| Max columns per table | 1024 | 3398 |
| Max table row length | 8036 | 65534 |
| Longest SQL statement | 16777216 | 1048574 |
| Constant string size in SELECT | 16777207 | 1048565 |
Data Storage
SQL Server with its closed, proprietary storage engine is fundamentally different from MySQL extensible, open storage engine. Its Sybase-derived database engine boasts of an adaptive algorithm that does most of the tuning that earlier needed to done manually. While SQL Server 2000 chooses the strategy of a single engine doing all the work, MySQL supports pluggable storage engines that can be chosen depending upon the facilities needed.
MySQL’s strategy is useful for various types of database use: quick read access to data without the need for transactional overhead is provided by the built in MyISAM engine, whereas InnoDB, a third party database engine owned by Oracle and licensed under the GPL is most often used for transactions and other features at the cost of some read performance. The MEMORY storage engine creates tables with contents that are stored in memory, and is useful for embedded database applications. NDB Cluster is the storage engine used by MySQL Cluster to implement tables that are partitioned over many computers.
The FEDERATED storage engine stores data in a remote database. In its current release, it works with MySQL only but its future releases will be able to connect to other data sources using other driver or client connection methods.
InnoDB engine has the most advanced database feature set. The disadvantage to MySQL’s pluggable database engine scheme is that care must be given when selecting the engine to use when designing the database before use.
MySQL database engine feature comparison
| MyISAM | InnoDB | MEMORY | NDB | |
| Multi-statement transactions, ROLLBACK | - | X | - | X |
| Foreign key constraints | - | X | - | - |
| Locking level | table | row | table | row |
| BTREE indexes | X | X | - | X |
| FULLTEXT indexes | X | - | - | - |
| HASH lookups | - | X | X | X |
| Other in-memory tree-based index | - | - | 4.1.0 | - |
| GIS, RTREE indexes | 4.1.0 | - | - | - |
| Unicode | 4.1.0 | 4.1.2 | - | - |
| Merge (union views) | X | - | - | - |
| Compress read-only storage | X | - | - | - |
| Relative disk use | low | high | - | low |
| Relative memory use | low | high | low | high |
Database Features
One of the critical features of any database engine is data integrity. ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable) compliance is a qualification that assures data integrity. ACID essentially means that when a transaction is performed within a database, either the whole transaction is successful and the information is written to the database, or nothing is written. Both SQL Server 2000 and MySQL supports ACID-compliant transaction functionality. SQL Server locks are dynamically applied at various levels of granularity, in order to select the least restrictive lock required for the transaction.
InnoDB provides MySQL with a transaction-safe (ACID compliant) storage engine with commit, rollback, and crash recovery capabilities. InnoDB does locking on the row level and also provides an Oracle-style consistent non-locking read in SELECT statements. These features increase multi-user concurrency and performance. In SQL queries you can freely mix InnoDB type tables with other table types of MySQL, even within the same query.
With the new release of MySQL 5.0, it has now incorporated several features that were missing earlier, and thus some of the reasons that caused you to choose SQL Server 2000 are no longer valid, for example, the need of Views, Cursors and Procedures. One thing now lacking is the full support for triggers. Another thing in which MySQL lags behind is XML support, and with the release of Yukon, this is going to look like a big gap in functionality.
| Feature | SQL Server 2000 | MySQL v5.0 | |
| ACID | Yes | Yes | |
| Referential Integrity | Yes | Yes | |
| Transactions | Yes | Yes | |
| Temporary Table | Yes | Yes | |
| Views | Indexed views | Updateable views | |
| Indexes | |||
| R-/R+ tree | ? | MyISAM only | |
| Hash | ? | MEMORY only | |
| Expression | ? | No | |
| Partial | ? | No | |
| Reverse | ? | No | |
| Bitmap | ? | No | |
| Cursor | Yes | Yes | |
| Trigger | Yes | Rudimentary | |
| Function | Yes | Yes | |
| Procedure | Yes | Yes | |
| External routine | Yes | Yes | |
| Partitioning | |||
| Range | Yes | NDB only | |
| Hash | No | No | |
| Composite | No | No | |
| List | No | No | |
| XML support | Yes | No | |
| Unicode | Yes | Yes |
Database Warehousing
The data warehouses or data marts can be used for sophisticated enterprise intelligence systems that process queries required to discover trends and analyze critical factors. These systems are called online analytical processing (OLAP) systems. The data in data warehouses and data marts is organized differently than in traditional transaction processing databases.
While SQL Server 2000 provides a lot of tools for creating and managing data warehouses, MySQL does not have any significant support for it. Data Transformation Services (DTS) provides a set of services used to build a data warehouse or data mart. Analysis Services is an excellent tool for multidimensional analysis of data in SQL Server 2000 databases. Analysis Services supports multidimensional queries against cubes with hundreds of millions of dimensions and you can even control cube security down to the level of cells and members. Data mining allows you to define models containing grouping and predictive rules that can be applied to data in either a relational database or multi-dimensional OLAP cubes. These predictive models are then used to automatically perform sophisticated analysis of the data to find trends.
Application Development
SQL Server 2000 and MySQL both support ODBC and JDBC for network connectivity, as well as native database access methods. These native methods provide access via the network in both plain text methods and, for a higher level of security, SSL-encrypted methods.
Another important part of database interface methods is authentication for the database. MySQL uses a simple method to store all of its authentication information inside a table. When users attempt to access a database, MySQL compares their credentials against this database, verifying from which machines the users can connect and to what resources they have access. SQL Server 2000 also has integrated Windows authentication.
A number of programming methods also provide ways to access these databases. Both SQL Server 2000 and MySQL support access via C/C++ , Java, Perl, Python, and PHP. One thing that differentiates SQL Server 2000 is its XML capabilities. Using SQLXML package with SQL Server 2000, it is possible to query relational data using XQuery and even expose stored procedures as web services.
Installation
Hardware and Software Requirements
Installation of Microsoft SQL Server requires a Windows operating system. So, if you need to run the database on a Linux box, the comparison is clearly in favor of MySQL. MySQL has been ported to all major operating systems and can be ported to any os that has a C++ compiler and a working implementation of POSIX threads. Using GNU autoconf, MySQL happily compiles on various flavors of UNIX, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Hardware cost is not as much of an issue as it once was, with RAM and hard disk space costs being low. But for the hardware conscious, SQL server can look like a hog compared to MySQL. While SQL server requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM for reasonable performance, MySQL can easily run on a Linux with as little as 32 MB of RAM, this is likely that is the reason that the MySQL installation manual doesn’t bother specifying hardware requirements.
Although it is not too difficult to compile the MySQL source code, a ready installer is always welcome to get you up and running quickly. With the release of MySQL 4.1.5, MySQL AB has introduced an installer for the Windows version of MySQL, combined with a new GUI Configuration Wizard. This combination automatically installs MySQL, creates an option file, starts the server, and secures the default user accounts.
| Hardware | SQL Server 2000 | MySQL 5.0 |
| Operating system | Windows XP, Windows 2000 Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 | Linux 2.0+ AIX 4.x, 5.x BSDI 3.0, 3.1 and 4.x FreeBSD 3.x, 4.x, 5.x OpenBSD 2.5+ Digital Unix 4.x HP-UX 10.20, 11.x NetBSD 1.3/1.4 Intel, 1.3 Alpha SCO Open Server, UnixWare 7.1 SGI Irix 6.5 Solaris 2.5 |
| Memory | Enterprise Edition and Enterprise Evaluation Edition: 64 MB minimum, 128 MB or more recommended
Standard Edition and Developer Edition: 64 MB minimum Personal Edition and Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000): 128 MB minimum on Windows XP 64 MB minimum on Windows 2000 32 MB minimum on other Windows | 32 MB of RAM |
| Hard disk space | Enterprise, Enterprise Evaluation, Standard, Developer, and Personal Editions require:
95 to 270 MB of available hard disk space for the database engine; 250 MB for a typical installation. 50 MB of available hard disk space for a minimum installation of Analysis Services; 130 MB for a typical installation. 80 MB of available hard disk space for English Query. Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000): 44 MB minimum | 60 to 85 MB depending on the components and operating system; 200 MB recommended for Windows. |
Installation
Microsoft products have always been known for the painless and quick installation through intuitive wizards. MySQL, despite being an open source product is no less, and you can expect the same kind of breezy installation. The installer will even create a Windows service for the MySQL database.
Administration and Maintenance
MySQL provides two types of backup, one where the database dump is taken and another where it emits all the SQL statements required to create the database. SQL Server 2000 only provides the first option. When it comes to hot backups, or backing up your database without shutting it down, both database solutions have methods for doing so. MySQL supports incremental backup strategy for minimizing the amount of time taken if an existing database backup is present.
SQL Server 2000 failover clustering provides high availability support. For example, during an operating system failure or a planned upgrade, you can configure one failover cluster to fail over to any other node in the failover cluster configuration. In this way, you minimize system downtime, thus providing high server availability. But for this, you will need to buy the Enterprise version. MySQL also provides clustering through its NDB database engine, but it is slightly difficult to configure.
MySQL supports one-way replication. One server acts as the master, while one or more other servers act as slaves. The master server writes updates to its binary log files and the slave servers periodically connect to get updates. SQL Server 2000 offers far more facilities for replication. It offers three choices – Snapshot, Transactional and Merge. While the transactional facility is similar to the MySQL master slave replication, Snapshot is useful where data has changed a lot and so the entire snapshot is sent to the slave. Using Merge replication, two SQL servers can send updates to each other and are a perfect choice for geographically separated SQL servers.
Both products have perfectly acceptable default security mechanisms, as long as you follow the manufacturer’s directions and keep up with your security patches. Both products operate over well-known default IP ports, and, unfortunately, those ports draw intruders like flies to honey. Fortunately, both SQL Server and MySQL allow you to change that port should the default become too popular a destination for your taste.
Stability is one area where MySQL, in its MyISAM configuration, falls a little short. With MyISAM, a UPS is absolutely mandatory because MyISAM assumes uninterrupted operation. If it is shut down unexpectedly, the result could be corruption of the entire data. SQL Server, on the other hand, is far more resistant to data corruption. SQL Server’s data goes through multiple checkpoints and SQL Server remembers where it was in the process even if it happens to be shut down without warning.
| SQL Server 2000 | MySQL v5.0 | |
| Hot backups | Yes | Yes |
| Replication | Snapshot, Transactional, Merge | One-way only |
| Clustering | Yes | Yes |
| Security features | High | High |
| Locking and concurrency support | Fully automated | Row-locking (InnoDB) |
| Stability | High | High(unless MyISAM) |
| GUI Administration Tools | Yes | Yes (download) |
Price
When it comes to licensing costs, MySQL definitely has an edge as it is free and open source software licensed under the GPL. With SQL Server, the most popular way to get a free developer license is to purchase a license for Microsoft Office Developer or Microsoft Visual Studio, both of which give you a free “development use only” SQL Server license.
SQL Server 2000 is currently available under two licensing options:
- Processor license
- Server/per-seat client access license (CAL)
The processor license requires a single license for each CPU in the computer running SQL Server 2000 and includes unlimited client access. You can buy this license when you do not know the number of the clients (for example, if your users will connect to SQL Server 2000 through the internet). This license usually is cheaper than Server/Per-Seat CAL when there are many users connected to SQL Server databases.
The Server/per-seat client access license (CAL) requires a license for the server and the licenses for each client device. You can use this licensing option when the customers do not need access beyond the firewall and the number of clients is low (for example, 10-20 users for SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition or 30-40 users for SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition).
Lately, Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE) which is actually a scaled down version of SQL Server has been made available as a free download. It is a very attractive choice if you need an embedded database for your windows applications, but is not recommended for use as a server in production environments.
|
Licensing Options | SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition | SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition |
|
Processor | $4,999 per processor | $19,999 per processor |
| Server/Per-Seat CAL | with 5 CAL – $1,489
with 10 CAL – $2,249 | with 25 CAL – $11,099 |
The MySQL version 5.0 is Dual Licensed. Users can choose to use the MySQL software as an Open Source/Free Software product under the terms of the GNU General Public License or can purchase a standard commercial license from MySQL AB.
The GPL license grants the user a right to use the database at no cost with the condition that any changes made to the source code of the database would have to be made available under GPL. Since most of the applications simply use the database, it is usually a zero-cost alternative.
The MySQL v5.0 Server commercial license is per database server (single installed MySQL binary). The price comparisons below were based on the MySQL Licensing Prices from MySQL AB.
| Number of licenses | Price per copy (EUR) | Price per copy (USD) |
| 1..9 | 440 | 495 |
| 10..49 | 315 | 360 |
| 50..99 | 255 | 290 |
| 100..249 | 195 | 220 |
| 250..499 | 155 | 175 |
Overall, MySQL has the edge in price as it is free, and performance can’t be conclusively shown to be any worse than MS SQL—it is also used extensively for high profile web applications such as various Yahoo properties and Google’s Adwords. Certain advanced features are not bundled with MySQL, but for basic simple development without licensing cost, MySQL can be seen to have the edge.
MS SQL 2000 and now 2005, are geared towards Microsoft style development on Windows Servers. Installation and configuration may be easier in MS SQL, with advanced database features present by default. MS SQL also implements features not found in any MySQL database engine, and is not overly high in license costs compared to some high end databases. For certain mid-level uses on Windows Servers, MS SQL probably wins out.
Both databases have a wide traction in the market, but being an open source project, MySQL community is somewhat more open and free, and being completely free, MySQL likely has a broader base of support.
MySQL
Comparison
features
ms
nonsense
ms-sql-server
Does someone at Nokia love Ruby?
This isn't really "news" but it's Ruby related and struck me as rather odd. I was just browsing Amazon.co.uk, doing some Christmas shopping, and came across a Nokia Internet Tablet with GPS (not an affiliate link) for only £139.99. I looked at the provided pictures of the device and was struck by the one above. It's a picture of a Ruby and you can just about make out "www.ruby-lang.org" written on the location bar of the device. This seems pretty weird on a mass market device, especially since they've gone to the trouble of putting a picture of a Ruby in the shot, rather than the real Ruby homepage.
Someone at Nokia, or perhaps an Amazon customer who's "shared" the image, appears to like Ruby. Is this a real promo shot for the device or merely an amateur creation? Interesting none the less when Ruby crops up in the most unlikely places.
Interesting Ruby Tidbits That Don't Need Separate Posts #8
Experiements with Windows Form Design with IronRuby
It's still early days, but Huw Collingbourne takes a look at the first steps made by IronRuby, a .NET implementation of the Ruby language, into native Windows form design.
JRuby 1.0.2 Released
It's only a point release, but JRuby 1.0.2 has hit the streets. Support for Rails 1.2.5 has been included, and almost 100 issues have been fixed since 1.0.1. Several "nasty issues" being experienced by Windows users have also been fixed. Remember that you can keep up with this and other JRuby news over at our sister site JRubyInside.com.
eBay Backed Rails Site Launches
Josh Susser has announced the launch of MicroPlace, a new eBay-backed Web site developed in Rails and aimed at allowing people to make "micro investments" in projects in the developing world. The site is all Rails (using ActiveRecord too) and MySQL, and unusual because eBay is typically a strongly Java environment.
Ruby Developer Tortured?
On the lighter side of this week's news, Meng Wong highlights a poor Ruby developer being tortured by a gorgeous woman in Mountain View, CA.
RailsConf EU 2007 Wrap Up
(photo credit: dwortlehock)
RailsConf Europe 2007 is over and it's time to wrap up. As before, there are oodles of pictures on Flickr with the "RailsConfEurope" tag (yah-boo to you miserable sods who don't use Creative Commons licenses for your photos) and DHH points to all of the presentations given at the conference (covering areas as wide as Ferret, REST, Adobe Flex, Amazon S3 and JRuby). Continuing from his fine coverage of Monday, the first day of the conference, Robert Dempsey succinctly wraps up the Tuesday morning and afternoon sessions, as well as the Wednesday morning sessions, and then Wednesday in its entirety. These are worth a read if you didn't go, as he provides some context missing elsewhere.
Last but not least, David Heinemeier Hansson's keynote. The King of Rails seemed to focus mostly on Rails 2.0, which will be more of an evolutionary step than a revolutionary one. Casper Fabricus has a superb writeup with many choice quotes and code examples, although Nick Sieger has done a good job too. On his own blog, however, the King decided to post his views of Sun's ever-growing support for Ruby and Rails and his ultimate satisfaction at the success of RailsConf in general.
Superators: Add new operators to Ruby
I know there's going to be some controversy around this clever piece of code by Jay Phillips. He's developed "Superators", a library that finally makes it easy to create new operators within Ruby that look like line noise. Always wanted a "-~+~-" or "===~-+~++" operator? Now it's within your grasp! As Aleks Clark says: "Job security and spiffy DSL construction in one neat package."
More "Ruby on Rails Versus" Videos
Remember the infamous "Ruby on Rails Vs" videos by the guys at RailsEnvy.com that were such a hit at RailsConf? Well they're back with two more..
Rails vs .Net
Rails vs PHP Redux
Playing Catchup: 5 Great Links From This Week
Ruby Inside hasn't had any new items for the last several days as I've just bought a house, and have had to enjoy the various work that brings. So, to get things back on track with Ruby Inside, here's a roundup of some of the key news and articles I've seen over the past week instead:
Why Releases His Shoes To The World
Despite the finest Ruby blog in the land, Why's RedHanded, slipping into a coma earlier this year, Why continues to wow the Ruby community with his contributions. This time around, he's built a cross-platform toolkit for making "Web-like Desktop Apps" using Ruby called Shoes. Drool over this sample code:
Why is releasing regular posts with information about Shoes and how to use it at Hackety.org.
Rails™ Turns 3.. officially, at least.
David Heinemeier Hansson celebrates Ruby on Rails'™ third anniversary of release to the public. Congratulations David and the rest of the Rails core team!
Last Week for Early Bird Prices for RailsConf Europe
You have until August 6 to register for RailsConf Europe at the early-bird rate of €645.00 (for the conference sessions only). It goes up to €795.00 thereafter.
"Scaling a Rails Application" Tutorial
Courtenay of caboo.se fame has written an excellent post that digs into the depths of scaling a Rails application.
Sphincter (a new ActiveRecord search library) Released
Eric Hodel has released version 1.0.0 of Sphincter, a tight library for extending ActiveRecord with Sphinx-powered search capabilities. It automatically configures itself, except telling it which models to search on your Rails applications. Sphinx is worth looking at if you haven't already as there are stable installations of it working well with indexing many terabytes of data.
That's it Jolks!
Normal service will resume in 3, 2, 1...