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Pro Active Record: Databases with Ruby and Rails
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating:   Write a Review and tell the world about this title! People who purchase this book frequently purchase: - RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails; Michael Hartl, et al, $28.50, 37% Off!
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Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby helps you take advantage of the full power of your
database engine from within your Ruby programs and Rails applications. ActiveRecord,
part of the magic that makes the Rails framework so powerful and easy to use,
is the model element of Rail’s model/view/controller framework. It’s
an object-relational mapping library enabling you to interact with databases
from both Ruby and Rails applications.
Because ActiveRecord is configured with default assumptions that mesh perfectly
with the Rails framework, Rails developers often find they hardly need think
about it at all. However, if you are developing in Ruby without Rails, or are
deploying against legacy databases designed without Rails in mind, or you just
want to take advantage of database-specific features such as large objects and
stored procedures, you need the in-depth knowledge of ActiveRecord found in
this book.
In Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby, authors Kevin Marshall, Chad Pytel, and Jon Yurek
walk you through every step from the basics of getting and installing the ActiveRecord
library to working with legacy schema to using features specific to each of
today’s most popular database engines, including Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL,
and more! You’ll come to a deep understanding of ActiveRecord that will
enable you to truly exploit all that Ruby, Rails, and your chosen database platform
have to offer.
Table of Contents
Contents
About the Authors
About the Technical Reviewer
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Introducing Active Record
Chapter 2 Active Record and SQL
Chapter 3 Setting Up Your Database
Chapter 4 Core Features of Active Record
Chapter 5 Bonus Features
Chapter 6 Active Record Testing and Debugging
Chapter 7 Working with Legacy Schema
Chapter 8 Active Record and the Real World
Appendix Active Record Methods in Detail
Index
About the Authors
Kevin Marshall is a software developer at heart. He is a consultant
to a number of companies and currently runs 50+ sites of his own—many of
which are now happily taking advantage of ActiveRecord with the Ruby on Rails
framework, including the popular Draftwizard.com. As a technology writer, Kevin
has published a short article, “Web Services with Rails”; contributed
a few recipes to the Ruby Cookbook; and contributed a number of articles to
the Association of Computing Machinery’s periodical, Computing Reviews
(available online at www.reviews.com).
Kevin is also a member of the Pro Football Writers Association, the Fantasy
Sports Trade Association, and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. When he’s
not deep into coding, building content, or talking football, he’s generally
off playing with his sons. To learn more about what he’s up to right now,
you can visit his company site, falicon.com, or just drop him a note at info@falicon.com.
Chad Pytel is president of thoughtbot, inc. a software development consulting
firm that specializes in agile, test-driven web application development using
the Ruby on Rails framework located in Boston, MA, and New York, NY. A firm
believer in the Model-View-Controller design pattern and realistic software
development, with a history in Java and EJB development, Chad strongly believes
that Ruby and Ruby on Rails represents a new, exciting, and better way to develop
software.
Chad lives with his wife in Somerville, MA. When not at the office managing
projects and writing code, Chad enjoys acting in and producing theater, film,
and improv comedy. To follow along with Chad and the rest of the thoughtbot
team’s thoughts on business, design, development, and technology, visit
their blog at giantrobots.thoughtbot.com.
Jon Yurek is CTO at thoughtbot, inc. Born a programmer, Jon has been
developing software professionally since 1999. After seeing the elegant and
expressive power of Ruby, Jon quickly moved all new development at thoughtbot
away from Java and Perl to using Ruby and Rails.
Jon is a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and currently lives in
Somerville, MA.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating: Nov 12, 2007 Justin Pease from Texas
Good, but not so "pro"
Visuals: Font size and layout are good. Easy on the eyes. Large and frequent sub-headings make it easier to locate information.
Audience: The book lists it's intended "User level" at "Intermediate-Advanced".
Practicality: It really depends on what you are expecting. I've been using Rails and ActiveRecord for about 2 years, so I should fit into the target audience. After reading the book I still think it will be a great reference book to have within arm's reach while working with ActiveRecord. To me it will serve as an API to AR. So it will be practical in that sense.
On the other hand, while reading it I never experienced any "aha!" moments where I felt like I learned something new or exciting, which I had hoped for from a "Pro" book.
If you are a beginner (never having used AR) it will definitely save you time (and eye strain) hunting down tutorials on blogs.
Overall: It's a good Active Record reference & usage tutorial(s). I would have appreciated this book even more when I was first starting to use the Ruby on Rails framework. So if you are a beginner, don't let the "Intermediate - Advanced" user level scare you off. If you are using Rails, even as a beginner, you will probably be using Active Record too. In fact I think this book would probably be better named "Beginning Active Record" instead of "Pro Active Record".
I was kind of surprised when I read the Introduction to the book that it starts off with:
"Is there really enough to talk about in Active Record to fill a whole book?"
"Our answer, then and now, is, "Yes and no""
As an "Intermediate - Advanced" user, that's kind of how I felt at the end of this "Pro" book.
I give the book 4 stars, with the assumption that you go into it with the expectation of "Beginning Active Record".
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