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Using Java Classes in JRuby by Eric Armstrong

I recently had occasion to write a JRuby script that used Java APIs in the XDocs CMS. I found most of the information I needed scattered around the web (the URLs are listed in the Resources section at the end). I decided to collect the relevant stuff in one place, leaving out the stuff that seemed extraneous, and adding the additional little bits that turned out to be necessary. This post contains the results. (But things may well change, so let me know if there are errors or it needs to be brought up to date!)

O/R Mismatch is "The Vietnam of Computer Science" by Ted Neward published on ODBMS.org

Neward argues that, like the dilemma faced by the US administration during the Vietnam war, the O/R mismatch is a quagmire where current approaches including object-relational mappers (ORMs) are subject to decreasing marginal returns. He lists the abandonment of objects (as a programming paradigm) or of relational data structures (as a database paradigm) as the only wholehearted solutions, while living with the pain or full integration of ORMs into languages or databases are other approaches.

The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders: A Pragmatic Approach by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott

Why does one product succeed while others crash? And why do the second and third products from a successful company almost always fail? The crew at Pragmatic Marketing determined that there are more reasons than features and price when determining the success (or failure) of a product, including “inside-out thinking” and the distractions of running a successful company. Here, they present 7 Secrets to dramatically increase the likelihood of becoming a market-driven success.

The Turnover Dilemma: A Question to Keep Employees by Matthew Kelly published by ChangeThis.com

What most consultants will not tell you is that while these are all valid reasons, they are secondary to what is at the core of the turnover issue. the #1 reason people leave a job is not because they have a dysfunctional relationship with their manager or because they don’t feel appreciated. they leave because they cannot see the connection between the work they are doing today and the future they imagine for themselves.

• Ajax on Rails by Curt Hibbs from ONLamp.com
• Rolling with Ruby on Rails Revisited Part 1, Part 2 by Bill Walton
• Cookin' with Ruby on Rails – May, Cookin' with Ruby on Rails – Designing for Testability and Cookin' with Ruby on Rails – More Designing for Testability by Bill Walton

Beginners Guide to Rails part 1 and part 2

This tutorial is not for those who are already building applications using the Rails framework. This is geared towards those who have not yet used Rails to build an application or a web site. Also, this article assumes that you do have some knowledge of setting up MySQL databases through an administrative program (via command line or another program).

Note: One change is required to make the example in the article work.

create_table "people" do |t|
t.column "id", :integer
t.column "name", :string
t.column "address", :string
t.column "city", :string
t.column "state", :string
t.column "zipcode", :string
end

Remove "id" line to

create_table "people" do |t|
t.column "name", :string
t.column "address", :string
t.column "city", :string
t.column "state", :string
t.column "zipcode", :string
end

Seeing Metaclasses Clearly from Why the Lucky Stiff

One more point and I believe this one is the juiciest. If you read the rest of this essay and quit before this section, you’ve come away without the most important lesson. You may know some nice things about objects and metaclasses, but it all pales.

A Low-Tech Approach to Understanding SOA by Dan North

This article presents a simple, technology-agnostic approach to designing and evolving SOAs. You will not see acronyms such as WSDL, SOAP, or REST, and I promise not to use technical terms like “orchestration,” “realization,” and “governance.” Because of this, you will be able to design and implement service-oriented architectures that truly serve your business.