on RailsSome time in February I blogged about DB2 being declared a finalist for the SIIA CODiE awards. At that time I did say that the final round of judging will be completed in mid-April. Last week the award winners were announced and, in the Best Database Management Solution category, the winner is … IBM DB2 for Linux, Unix and Windows.
April 25 2007 | Announcements | Comments Off
Windows Vista has been out in retail since the start of the month. I am not going to debate the ultimate success that Vista will or will not achieve in the market … there are far too many keystrokes wasted on this debate already. If you want to run Vista on your PC or your Apple Mac (either in Parallels Desktop for Mac or in the VMWare Virtualization for Mac) and you want to build Ruby on Rails applications using DB2, you need to read on.
Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails v2.1 (current version) includes DB2 Express – C v9.1 at no charge (you did know that we give you DB2 absolutely free, right?). This version of DB2 Express – C will not run on Vista. We do have a special version of DB2 Express – C (still absolutely free) that does run on Vista. You can get it from the official DB2 Express – C website.
There is no doubt that downloading and installing yet another copy of DB2 Express – C is a pain. Rest assured we do understand that and we will be uploading a brand new version of the Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails shortly. Besides including a newer version of DB2 Express – C that works with Vista, the new Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails will contain numerous performance and functional enhancements including better support for the recently released Rails 1.2.1. Stay tuned and watch this space.
February 25 2007 | Announcements | 3 Comments »
DB2 was recently declared a finalist in the 2007 SIIA CODiE awards. CODiE awards are not decided in a popularity contest or by getting general public to vote. The Codie Awards are judged in two rounds by a panel of judges. Finalists are determined during the first round of judging. First round Codie Awards Judges are representatives from the software and information industry trade press, technology writers, analysts, consultants and other experts. As a result of the first round DB2 9 was declared a finalist in the “Best Database Management Solution” category along with 4 other submissions. The second round of will begin on February 12 and will complete on March 14 and the winners will be announced on April 17.
February 06 2007 | Announcements | Comments Off
This is a second edition of an excellent book that is a must have for anyone interested in Ruby on Rails. Agile Web Development with Rails Second Edition can be downloaded as PDF in its final form and, according to Pragmatic Programmer email will be available in printed form on December 15.
The best part is that it does talk about Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails as a way to get set up with DB2 and Ruby on Rails very quickly. It does not talk enough about it but I am a bit biased in this area.
December 08 2006 | Announcements | Comments Off
It has only been short 5 months since we released the first Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails v1.0. Since then we released v1.1 in mid-June, version 2.0 on October 4 and in early November we released version 2.1. This is agile release schedule for an agile development technology.
If you did not get version 2.1 yet, go to IBM alphaWorks at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/db2onrails. This new version includes final version of the DB2 Express – C 9; improved handling of LOBs, BLOBs, and XML data types; and significant performance and quality improvements.
December 05 2006 | Announcements | 2 Comments »
Dave Thomas opened the conference with his keynote and it absolutely struck the right cord with me. His message was both blunt and simple: “For Ruby on Rails to succeed i.e. to gain much wider adoption it must embrace legacy i.e. the stuff that already exists.” Given the fact that I spend all of my time in the enterprise, I could not agree more. Dave talked about 3 challenges but the one that I really resonated with me (the all did) the challenge of embracing data integration. Active Record is an incredibly elegant piece of technology. The value that derives form DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) can not be overstated. But Active Record fails to exploit constraints that are already defined in most databases. In a typical enterprise application you will have data architects and DBAs spend significant effort to define constraints on the data that reflect real world business rules. So why is it that that the framework that espouses to live and die by the principle of DRY makes programmers respecify these constraints in the Active Record instead of just using what has already been specified in the database? It just makes sense for Active Record to build validations from the constraints that are defined in the database. This would take Rails from “elegant” to “brilliant”. I do not mean any disrespect towards the Rails programmers, they really are cream of the crop … but in an enterprise application you simply will not have all of the information to do all of the validations to enforce all of the business rules and constraints. Not over a span of many years (decades) that the application will stay in production. One thing that is true about data gathered by successful applications is that is always accessed by other applications. This is why enterprise class database systems define and enforce constraints in the database. Given that their job is to is ensure data integrity no matter which application they serve, how can they not? I really hope that RoR community heads Dave Thomas’s call and makes Active Record really brilliant.
June 24 2006 | Announcements | 3 Comments »
When you download Startup Toolkit for DB2 on Rails you get 3 flash movies that help to get you started. But these demos will only give you a taste. On the other hand there are many really good books out there on both Ruby and Rails but they don’t talk about DB2. Now there is also an article on developerDomain. This article is written by Edd Dumbill a guy with a lot of practical experience both doing and teaching Ruby on Rails. So, clear out 15 minutes on your calendar and point your browser to http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0606dumbill/ to read An introduction to Ruby on Rails for DB2 developers.
June 23 2006 | Announcements and How-to | Comments Off
We just published a minor update to the Startup Toolkit for DB2 on Rails. We have not added new functions but we did address several bugs. One of the most serious issues is DB2 adapter disabling other databases. The new version 1.1 does solve this problem though we do think that DB2 is the only database you need :-).
For those of you on Windows you can apply the update by clicking on the “Check for Updates” shortcut on the DB2 on Rails folder in Start/All Programs. Those of you on Linux and build your driver and adapter from source, simply download DB2onRails_V1.1_Source.zip and follow instructions in README.txt.
June 16 2006 | Announcements | 1 Comment »
If you love Ruby on Rails and find that database like MySQL just does not cut it for you, you will be glad to hear that you can now use DB2 for your Ruby on Rails projects. IBM enabled DB2 for RoR programming by releasing a DB2 Ruby driver and DB2 Rails adapter as part of the Startup Toolkit for DB2 on Rails. This makes DB2 the only database with the vendor supplied enablement for Ruby on Rails.
June 14 2006 | Announcements | Comments Off
