There’s no doubt about it, Ruby on Rails is hot, but not the only game in the Ruby web framework town. Many Ruby developers are Ruby developers because of Ruby on Rails but these developers are missing out on a web framework just a year old, Merb.
Merb is a web framework created by Ezra Zygmuntowicz, founder of The Engine Yard which provides its own solution to building web applications based on their work with Rails and leveraging some of the downsides to build something better. Rails uses ActiveRecord to access data but Merb lets the developer choose from others, including DataMapper. DataMapper is an ORM increasing in popularity due to its simplicity.
I have found a blog over at Atlantic Dominion Solutions that provides some good information on using some of the latest coming from the Ruby world. One such nugget was an article by Chris Kaukis titled Merborial: Getting Started with Merb and DataMapper.
The article covers:
- Installing DataMapper
- Installing Merb
- Installing DataMapper drivers for Merb
- Installing Merb Helpers
- Creating a Merb application
- Connecting up to DataMapper
- Database setup and Configuration with Merb
- Running the Merb application
This is one of those tutorials I had thought to create and blog about but ADS has done this already, so I just wanted to point it out and let you in on a great resource in the ADS blog.