>>I downloaded & read your fine white paper, and am curious enough to want to explore Ruby more. Based on your experience, in a few sentences, could you please give a VFP developer your opinion on what kinds of things Ruby and/or Rails do NOT do very well, in terms of programming implementation and/or performance and/or types of applications?
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>Hi Mark,
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>I'm glad to know of your interest in Ruby and Rails. I'll do my best to answer your questions.
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>Ruby is a general purpose programming language. Unlike Visual FoxPro or the Visual Studio languages, Ruby does not come packaged with an IDE, although there are 3rd party IDEs out there if you want to use one. Also, while there are GUI libraries (such as Tk) available for Ruby, you would probably not choose Ruby to create desktop applications, particularly not for deployment on Windows where IMO Visual FoxPro or .NET are better choices. Having said that, Ruby can certainly be used to write all manner of programs and other types of applications, including Web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails.
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>Ruby on Rails is a framework for the development of Web applications, particularly those that need to interact with a database. The Rails framework is based on the concept of "convention over configuration", which means that development is fairly straightforward and little if any additional configuration is required to get things working as long as you follow the conventions imposed by the framework. In that respect it's really no different than working with any other framework: things work out smoothly if you use it as intended, but you're most likely creating extra work for yourself if you depart from the conventions or try to use it for other purposes.
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>I really don't feel qualified to say much about performance, partly because there are so many factors that can affect it and partly because my experience is still limited. Ruby is an interpreted language and there are several different interpreters out there, so that's one variable. I have heard it said that Rails applications are not necessarily the fastest in the world, but for any given app that naturally depends on how well the app is designed, how and where it's deployed, what demands are being placed on it, what resources it has available to it, etc., etc., etc. I certainly feel comfortable saying that Ruby on Rails is more than adequate for Web applications on the scale that we as VFP developers are probably accustomed to working with. If much larger apps -- on the scale of, say, amazon.com or Twitter -- are of concern to you, I'd suggest searching for more information. There is nothing if not a wealth of resources and references about Ruby and Rails available on the Web.
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>HTH,
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>-Rick

Thanks for the reply, Rick. Your paper used a single-table database for its examples. Can Rails easily handle more complex, mutli-table databases -- e.g., parent-child-grandchild or parent w/ multiple children or many-to-many w/ pivot table?