Speeding up queries by a factor of 100 or more with DB2 Text Search

During a recent Rails project at IBM we had to deal with a large table consisting of customers. The table is made up of legacy enterprise data, and contains close to a million records. Among many other fields, the table Customers includes a column name defined as VARCHAR. name is used to store company names. One of the requirements for the project was to implement a Google Suggest-like feature. That is, when...

Installing Ruby on Rails and DB2 on Ubuntu 11.04

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a complete Ruby on Rails setup for DB2 on Ubuntu. Following my step-by-step instructions, you’ll be able to install the following components: Ruby 1.8.7 Rubygems Ruby on Rails DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 The official Ruby driver and Rails adapter for DB2 Installing Ruby We are going to install Ruby 1.8.7 using the Debian packages that are available in the default...

Review of Rails Best Practices

Over the weekend I had a chance to play around a bit with Rails Best Practices, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts I had regarding it. In the startup world we often debate the merit of ideas vs execution. In this particular case, the idea behind this product is pretty straightforward. It’s a video course about common idioms and best practices in Rails, that helps you learn how to refactor bad Rails...

Running Radiant CMS on DB2 in the Cloud

In this article I will show you how to set up and run Radiant CMS on DB2 Express-C in the Cloud. Before getting started, let’s define each of these components: Radiant CMS is a popular, easy to use open source Content Management System (CMS) that’s written in Ruby on Rails. DB2 Express-C is a fully functional, free edition of DB2 which can be used in production for commercial purposes. Cloud, in this particular...

Interview with Michael Hartl, author of the Rails 3 Tutorial

The following is an interview with Michael Hartl, author of the popular Rails 3 Tutorial. I want to thank Michael for his time and answers. Be sure to read until the end; as per Monday’s post, I’m doing a Twitter giveaway for this interview, too. 1. How did you go from Theoretical Physics to Ruby Programming? I have a background in computational physics, and I learned Perl and then Python to avoid the...

The recommended Ruby and Rails book pages have been updated

During the holiday lull I managed to finally update the Ruby and Rails book pages. The Ruby page includes a few new titles and sees a few existing ones get the axe, as I took the major emphasis on Ruby 1.9 into consideration when updating this list of books. The Rails page is a complete rewrite as I’ve removed any trace of Rails 2 books. I outlined a useful path of Rails books to follow based on the few...

StreamSend is looking for a senior (Rails) web developer

This is just a quick heads up for my US readers. Given the tough economy we’re all battling, I thought you might be interested in learning about a great employment opportunity. My friends at StreamSend are looking for a senior web developer (preferably one with Rails experience, however they don’t discriminate as long as you can learn quickly and have enough web development expertise to satisfy their...

Padrino: a Ruby framework built upon Sinatra

From the Padrino’s site: Padrino is a ruby framework built upon the excellent Sinatra Microframework. Sinatra is a DSL for creating simple web applications in Ruby with speed and minimal effort. This framework makes it as fun and easy as possible to code increasingly advanced web applications by expanding upon Sinatra while maintaining the spirit that made it great. The Ruby community has plenty of web...

Upgrading to Rails 3

Rails 3 is a major upgrade; using it almost feels like working with an entirely new framework. Porting existing applications and acquiring the skills required to build new ones entails a significant amount of effort. You could scout the net for bits and pieces of information, but that would be time consuming and possibly frustrating. Thankfully there are resources available that have done the work for you, so you...

IBM_DB 2.5.0 with support for Rails 3 is out

This is a tiny post to let you know that IBM just released version 2.5.0 of the IBM_DB gem with support for the upcoming Rails 3. That’s what I call both proactive and a true testament of IBM’s commitment towards DB2 on Rails. Aside from providing a working adapter and driver before the new framework release is even out, this release has a few improvements and fixes, such as getting rid of a minor...

Rails, DB2 and the Enterprise

Recently Matt Aimonetti wrote an insightful article about Rails and the Enterprise. In it he identifies five core Enterprise application needs: Reliability Support Performance Advantage over the competition Integration and transition path Matt then proceeds to illustrate how Rails does a good job in regards to most of these points, despite a few existing challenges. Among these challenges, I can clearly see the...

DB2 support for Ruby/Rails turns 2.0

This article is obsolete. Please refer to the following articles for up do date instructions: Ruby/Rails and DB2 | Python/Django and DB2. Thank you! The API development team just released a major version of the ibm_db gem. Detailed installation instructions are available on RubyForge (PDF). Among several improvements, there are three particularly newsworthy features: Support for Ruby 1.9; Support for mingw32, used...

Setup Ruby Enterprise Edition, nginx and Passenger (aka mod_rails) on Ubuntu

The following is a very short guide on setting up Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE), nginx and Passenger, for serving Ruby on Rails applications on Ubuntu. It also includes a few quick and easy optimization tips. We start with setting up REE (x64), using the .deb file provided by Phusion: wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/66163/ruby-enterprise_1.8.7-2009.10_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i...

Installing the Ruby driver for DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Now that Mac OS X 10.6 is out, it’s time to leave the world of 32 bit computing behind. The pre-installed Ruby interpreter will run in 64 bit mode by default, so you may need to pay attention when installing some C-based gems. The ibm_db Ruby gem for DB2 can easily be installed or updated to the latest available version by following these simple steps: $ sudo -s $ export...

Recommended Ruby and Rails books (August 2009)

I finally got around to updating the Ruby and Rails book pages. The existing list was getting a bit obsolete and I didn’t like the idea of recommending old books to newcomers. I also had some interesting new entries. Without further ado: Recommended Ruby Books Recommended Rails Books A few people may disagree with the choices, but I think most experienced Ruby and Rails programmers, who’ve read those...

On JRuby’s importance for the future of Ruby

In a recent blog entry, Charles Nutter argues about the importance of JRuby for Ruby’s adoption within the Enterprise. Or, in his own words: The idea of “Enterprise Ruby” has become less repellant since Dave Thomas’s infamous keynote at RailsConf 2006. There are a lot of large, lumbering organizations out there that have yet to adopt any of the newer agile language/framework combinations, and...

DB2 Express-C 9.7 and the Django adapter released

This is a great day for those of us who love DB2, as DB2 Express-C 9.7 has just been released. As mentioned before, this is the best DB2 ever, and an extremely important release. To learn more about what’s new in this release, please check out the recording of our latest webinar: If you run Linux, Unix or Windows, download it while it’s hot. DB2 9.7 on the Cloud Another great aspect of this release...

Do Androids Count Electric Sheep with DB2 or MySQL?

Counting rows is an ubiquitous operation on the web, so much so that it’s often overused. Regardless of misuse, there is no denying that the performance of counting operations has an impact on most applications. In this post I’ll discuss my findings about the performance of DB2 9.5 and MySQL 5.1 regarding counting records. For those of you who are not into science fiction, let me clarify that the odd...

Startup Interviews: Zooppa.com

What follows is an interview with Nicholas Wieland, CTO of Italy-based Zooppa, a fast growing social network for creative types. This is the second in a series of interviews I will carry out with interesting figures from the micro-ISV and startup scene. If you have a compelling story to tell, own or run a tech startup, and would like to be featured, please drop me a line via email. 1. I’d like to start by...

Do you read the Rubyist and Rails Magazine?

Books and magazines have always fascinated me. Perhaps this is due to the fact that until I was nine, my father owned a bookstore and I would spend a lot of my time hanging out in a world of dust jackets and big words. More recently, the internet has brought information sharing to a whole new level and opened up a realm of amazing possibilities. I love this this element of being online to death, but it also means...