From: Xevious <xevious@...>
Date: 2005-05-14T00:21:13+09:00
Subject: Which Ruby Framework for a Web Application


I have been out of the Ruby loop for a while. You might say I was Ruby 
when Ruby
wasn't cool (to paraphrase a country song). That was a few years ago and 
now I am
playing catch-up.

I am currently evaluating three web frameworks for Ruby: Rails, Iowa, 
and Nitro.

Does anyone have some real-world observations on which would be best suited
for a web application that:

  o Needs to emulate the functions of a webmail client (but will have a 
custom
     messaging backend based in SQL).

  o Will have reporting capabilities similar to what you would expect 
from Crystal Reports.
     (the reports will be defined in SQL, web app provides presentation 
and printing)

  o Will need various bits of JavaScript and xmlHttpRequest magic. In 
particular, emulation
     of ASP.Net's tree control and bound datagrid.

  o  Will be hosted on Windows Server (but can use Apache instead of IIS).

  o  Will be load balanced across multiple servers. We *can* cause the 
load balancer to
     send request from the same client to the same host - that should 
help with session and
     state control.

  o  The ORM needs to be happy with stored procedures (or not used at 
all). We will never
     have direct access to even the smallest table.

Whew! That should be enough to chew on for the moment.

xev