Last week, I gave a live presentation to ~250 people, which was basically me walking through the process of using Ruby on Rails to talk to a legacy database1. For my example, I used the Dell DVD database. the PostgreSQL version. You can review some comments about my presentation by reviewing this entry on the blog of Ryan Davis. I wrapped quite a bit of the database in a few minutes and then showed what another 45 minutes of work could do with Rails. I’ll tarball that code and post it online soon.
Alex Bunardzic found it practical. I’ll take that as a compliment. ;-)
Earlier, I noticed this blog entry by Chris… where he said, “PostgreSQL also seems to be growing more briskly among the database category, while MySQL declines modestly. I guess that’s good news for Robby.” What exactly made me happy? This bullet made by Tim O’Reilly on Radar in his post, State of the Computer Book Market, Part 2.
“A surprise to many may be the s*trong growth of PostgreSQL, up 84% over a year ago*. We’ve also been hearing some signs of growth in the Postgres market from our “alpha geek” radar, with reasons given including better support for geo data, and better handling of very large data sets. New companies like Greenplum and EnterpriseDB have also brought a little focus to this market. We’re updating our PostgreSQL book, and watching this market closely.”
That’s awesome! Go PostgreSQL!
Then to my surprise, I was contacted by CRN (again) to get my thoughts on MySQL’s awesome storage-engine plugin system. which showed up a few hours later in this article. The writer of that article managed to goof my last name (Robby Hill?)… and hopefully that gets resolved soon. ;-)
As I said at Canada on Rails in front of 250 people, “I find databases… sexy.”
(free desktop wallpaper!)
Why Rails? Why PostgreSQL?
Rails.. that’s a no-brainer.
PostgreSQL? Well.. they have compatible licenses… no dual-license smell when your trying to sell your application as a complete solution… and as Rails is database agnostic. there is no reason not to give PostgreSQL a try.
Who uses PostgreSQL on Rails?
- CDBaby
- Shopify
- PLANET ARGON (on almost every project we work on…)
- you…?
If your using PostgreSQL on Rails… email me. I’d love to hear and share your story on my O’Reilly blog, like I did with Derek Sivers and Jeremy Kemper of CDBaby a few months ago, which you can read here.
again… I find databases sexy.
If your a PLANET ARGON hosting customer… you can follow these instructions to install PostgreSQL on your PLANET ARGON hosting account.
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According to the Rails convention (and by me)... any database created pre-Rails or doesn't follow the conventions is considered legacy. ;-)↩︎
