As an industry, we've fooled ourselves over the years into believing that database access should be either difficult, ugly, or both. With the loud and flashy introduction of Rails in 2004, many of us were shocked to learn that Object-Relational mapping can be both easy and beautiful. With the right combination of language power and constraints, database access code goes from being painful to trivial.

In this session we'll learn how Rails' Active Record ORM framework uses Ruby's dynamic nature and a healthy dose of hubris to give developers the ease of use that has been eluding our Object- Relational excursions for years. We'll learn about Active Record's conventions, how to use Active Record to perform typical relational database access, and where the framework's limitations begin.