Enterprise Rails

by Dan Chak

What does it take to develop an enterprise application with Rails? Enterprise Rails introduces several time-tested software engineering principles to prepare you for the challenge of building a high-performance, scalable website with global reach. You'll learn how to design a solid architecture that ties the many parts of an enterprise website together, including the database, your servers and clients, and other services as well.

Many Rails...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596515200
• ISBN13: 9780596515201
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Get this book if you are serious about rails.

This is my first ever review. Oddly none of the other technical books (over 300) that I read ever compelled me write before. As Dan Chak recommends, if you are new to rails, first read Agile Development for Rails, then start with Enterprise Rails. Every rails developer needs to read this book. You are creating an application that you *hope* will actually grow in demand. Isn't that what we are all looking to do in the end - make a hot app? Why not be pragmatic by laying the foundation of robustness, scalability with that in mind in the first place? I loved the sections on network design, database design (of course, ex-DBA), and services (I know so little about SOA). Having read 9 other rails books, I was nervous that rails community ignored that some areas completely. Despite its principles, it was intend on re-inventing the wheel. It made me feel like Dorothy in the Oz with munchkins shouting how great Rails is no matter the issue. That made me wonder if rails community was really open and flexible as claimed. The other books were good, but you need more than books touting rails' magic and coolness - sweet/success/awesome. Enterprise Rails is excellent in terms of readability, examples, and pragmatic practical advice. Yes - it is sweet and awesome too! There now I can be a cheerleader too. Reading reviews and Chak's articles, I was worried that the book would be full of theory and dry. Instead it covers just the right about of theory supported with insightful examples and exercises to confirm that you really understood the problem and solution. Thank you Dan for helping me understand rails better and getting rid of that awful in queasy feeling each time I was writing a rail app.

Excellent infrastructure book - rails in the enterprise

This is an excellent book for those of us that use rails in back office type environments. In those environments, Ruby and Rails allow fast, iterative integration. As more and more systems go distributed, there is the constant need to re-integrate applications. SOA is not just a buzzword, there is solid work that is being done around moving monolithic and legacy system to service oriented platforms. This books does an excellent job explaining these concepts, and illustrating how Rails can shine in this environment.

The "missing" Rails book

In my opinion, "Enterprise Rails" is the second book that you should read once you've finished a Rails intro book such as Agile Web Development w/Rails. For any serious developer, this book will give you the advice you need to create proper "enterprise" grade applications using Ruby on Rails - it's a book that the Rails community was in dire need of. From the beginning, Mr. Chak advocates how to properly set up and architect a Rails application, without any of the "magic" that every other Rails book out there touts; you won't be using generators and scaffolding, or even migrations. Instead you learn to properly normalize tables and create database-level constraints to make sure your application is secure. You will learn about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and how to layer services on your application. In short, this is the book that will take your Rails applications to the next level and not only take advantage of the power of Ruby on Rails, but the proven enterprise-grade architecture techniques to build powerful, scalable applications the PROPER way. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is comfortable with the basics of Rails and wants to learn how to write real-world applications that can withstand the test of time and grow to suit the needs of their clients.

A diamond in thr rough......

First off let me say that before the publication of this book, the material available for Rails developers has been mediocre at best. Most titles feature either rudimentary examples that bear no relation to real world scenarios or, even worse, a convoluted attempt to show how ruby can be used to construct DSLs. DHH book is by far the best but consistently out-dated to the extent that the tutorial presented in the first part won't work on the latest Rails release. Enter Chak's refreshing take on how Rails is used in the real-world. Instead of rehashing the same tired examples, Chak actually discusses what I would characterise as a "best practice" approach to building enterprise Rails apps. This book does for Rails what Shlossnagle's Scalable Internet Architectures does for enterprise web infrastructures. That is it presents an in-depth analysis of how Rails is implemented in the real world. Just some examples: Chak discusses why postgres is a better open source solution than mysql for heavily trafficed sites. A useful discussion of how to structure your Rails development and production environments and how to correctly implement namespaces and plugins. How to utilize SOA and Restful designs. All in all this is an excellent book. While not for the beginner it is definitely the book to read after you've developed an app or two. It's database centric approach makes it unique among Rails offerings and will bring you up to speed on the CORRECT way to design and implement databases for any development project. This book sorely shows how inadequate the Rails literature has been up to now.

This book brings clarity to large scale application development like Deploying Rails Applications br

Dan Chak offers incredible wisdom and experience in this book. I have been trying to get to the next step in Rails development for a long time, and now with his book, I have the know-how to do so. This book is a must own for anyone who wants to use Rails to develop serious applications.