From: "bzamfir@..." <bzamfir@...>
Date: 2006-08-07T19:15:05+09:00
Subject: Few questions from a newbye

Hi,

I'm an experienced developer and I just fond out about Ruby.
Being a cross platform and allowing (with the help of Ruby2exe) to
generate exe applications, it seems a solution worthing to consider for
development.

However, I'd like to ask some questions:

1. Currently my main development platform is Windows, so is there any
free yet powerful IDE for Ruby on Windows, with intelisense
(auto-complete), debugger, etc - anything you'd expect from a good IDE?
If not on Windows, is there any like that on other platforms?

2. Is there any visual designer for ruby (I mean to build user
interface visually, like in VB, Deplhi, etc)? Is it integrated with the
IDE?

2.bis. As I understood there are several libraries for building GUI
with Ruby, which one is the most portable one across as many platforms
as possible, as well as allowing to develop applications with a modern
look (I mean to have as many visual controls as possible - tables,
tabs, splitters, etc). Is there any visual designer for that?

3. I saw almost all Ruby tutorials uses MySql as database engine. I
used it a lot woth web applications, but I'm wondering, if I need to
use it with a ruly application, is tere any way to embed it into the
setup kit and install automatically (silent) with ruby? Is there any
tool which help accomplishing this?

4. How is Ruby working with other databases? Does it have native
capabilities to work with DB's like Access (MDB) and other database for
PC (XLS file, CSV, etc). Or is it using ODBC, OleDB or anything like
that?

5. If using ODBC/OleDB, is thsi supported on other platforms (for
example, a ruby application running on a linux or Mac, to access a pc
database (MDB, for example) over a network, from a PC server?

6. is there any Ruby implementation (including a GUI library) for
Pocker PC?

Thank you for all your answers.

Cordially yours,
Bogdan Zamfir