Ruby on Rails & Its Key Aspects

Quick Summary: Ruby on Rails is a popular web framework that is used to create robust web applications. It is based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. Read on to know more about Ruby on Rails, its benefits, and other information.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed a number of breakthrough technologies emerge on the horizon. Ruby on Rails (RoR) is one such technology that has raised the bar for application development.

Originally extracted by the Danish programmer David Heinemeier Hansson, RoR has matched wits with other popular programming languages.

But RoR took the programming world by storm when Apple announced that it would ship RoR with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard. Ever since that day, RoR has not looked back!

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RoR – Technical Grouping

What is interesting about RoR is its technical grouping. As the name suggests, RoR is a combination of Ruby – an object-oriented scripting language and Rails – a web application development framework. This technical combination has resulted in the popularity of web application development services at enterprise level.

Ruby on rails web app has increased agility, speed, and dependability in enterprise applications and enhanced their return on investment.

Principle Base of RoR

Convention over Configuration

Convention over configuration is also referred to as ‘coding by convention’ by the programming community. The phrase indicates that a developer has to only specify unconventional aspects of an application in RoR.

The RoR framework has its own common application settings. Developers have to define only those settings that differ from the common ones.

Let’s assume your model has a class called ‘purchase.’ The corresponding database table will have “purchases” as its default name. But if you try to rename it as “material purchased,” then it means you are deviating from the convention for which you need to write a code.

Don’t Repeat Yourself

RoR’s Don’t Repeat Yourself, or DRY principle prevents code repetition and duplication. It ensures that information is retrieved across multi-tiered application architectures without code redundancy. RoR’s grouping logic makes this possible.

When a developer modifies one element in the application, he does not have to modify all the related elements individually. The logical grouping of elements in RoR takes care of that. Additionally, the associated elements change uniformly while still staying in sync.

Application Designing in RoR

Model View Controller (MVC) designing pattern dominates the RoR application development field. MVC is so highly preferred because of its ability to support rapid development of medium and large-sized applications. As the name suggests, MVC has three fundamental components:

(1) Model: This is the data and the business logic

(2) View: Presentation of data to the viewers

(3) Controller: The code that facilitates interaction between models and views.

MVC’s most significant advantage is its enforcing nature. Suppose the application model dictates that a field should have certain characters or a specific value.

In that case, developers can enforce this at the model level, where database and logic reside, and implement it across the architecture.

They don’t need to go on checking values at every single place. Quite a relief for your application development team , isn’t it?

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RoR Applications and Scaling

A development team can address application scaling at multiple levels like language performance, framework efficiency, architecture agility, and system in RoR.

Developers can identify frequently requested and performance-sensitive actions and scale them seamlessly in RoR. But what really steals the show here is RoR’s ability to support application scaling at web level as well as enterprise level.

Whether it’s a web ruby on rails application development or enterprise RoR application, developers can scale it to accommodate several hundred users.

RoR and Data Storage

RoR applications have massive database support to optimize productivity. They can be supported by database servers like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, DB2, and Oracle. The good thing about RoR applications is that they can draw strength from their individual technology components.

Ruby uses a model-programming paradigm, and Rails uses scaffolding programming to infuse flexibility in database-driven applications. The advantages of data collection, visualization, and distribution at the enterprise level afford a competitive edge to RoR.

RoR and CMS

RoR can also attribute some of its immense popularity to its content management system (CMS). A developer can design destination sites with page elements like RSS, Atom, label, overlay, API clouds, etc. RoR developers can use the framework’s CMS to develop multilingual support for applications, news release sections, template hosting features, etc.

This CMS further allows RoR developers to integrate features like image cropping and resizing, design editors, blogs, etc. to make the application interactive and exciting for users.

RoR Fan Club

Tom Mornini, CTO and co-founder of Engine Yard, recently contributed an excellent piece on RoR in Business Insider. Mornini quoted Bill Abel, vice president and director of digital development, Luckie and Company stating, “We chose Ruby on Rails programming because it allows us to develop websites dramatically faster.

We finished the first release of the Bayer Advanced website in 2 months – a 50% reduction in development time.

Rails is a complete 180 to traditional app development; it’s very structured, and the built-in hooks made our transition much easier. The Rails test-driven development model has helped us achieve development efficiencies, so we can build websites more quickly and deliver a much more reliable product.”

The Business Insider piece further quotes Thor Muller, CTO and co-founder of Get satisfaction state, “Ruby on Rails web app offers more than just pure speed. We know it is faster to develop an initial working product in Rails, so prototyping in Rails makes a lot of sense for us.

As we worked more with Rails, we realized it was also ideal for our work style and the types of personalities we wanted to develop our product – particularly because our established developers like the elegance of the Ruby language and Rails framework.”

Wrapping up

It is evident that RoR is gaining steam as we advance in 2011. Ruby rails programming fans are becoming more verbal with their appreciation of the framework.

On the framework side, ruby on rails web app is more open than ever and easier to set up, install, update, and adapt to different hosting environments. Let’s see what the next year or two holds in store for RoR.

Ruby on Rails application development framework is a powerful tool for web development that adds a back-end layer to front-end skills such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Although Rails is a crucial skill to incorporate if you already have tech skills, it is also user-friendly enough to be an utterly manageable entry point into programming and web apps.