Track:   Enterprise Application Frameworks (day 2)

Abstract: Ruby on Rails provides a full-stack web development platform. Its two major portions are ActiveRecord, the OR/M system for data modeling, and ActionPack, which provides support for the Views and Controllers. During this talk, we'll get to see what sets ActionPack apart from more traditional MVC frameworks, and also what ideas survive intact. ActionPack uses "convention over configuration" instead of heaps of detailed XML to wire up the HTTP endpoints to eventual behavior and views, and provides several different routing strategies for managing the URL-space of your application. Its rendering engine uses a combination of script-in-a-template style (.rhtml) which is a direct .jsp equivalent, but also a more code-centric approach, called Builder. We'll look at how Helpers compare to tag libraries, and exactly how Rails integrates with JavaScript frameworks for Ajax applications. By the end of the talk, experienced Java web developers should be able to draw a mental map of features they are used to in their current frameworks to the features of Rails and be confident about trying Rails for the first (or second, or third) time.