Just a friendly reminder ;)

Posted by Jeremy Voorhis Mon, 13 Feb 2006 01:15:00 GMT

Rails is not synonymous with MySQL

Despite the constant conjunction between Rails howto articles, examples in books and David Heinemeier Hanssion interviews, Rails supports far more than just MySQL with its ActiveRecord object-relational mapper.

At PLANET ARGON, we almost exclusively use PostgreSQL in Ruby on Rails development projects that we start from scratch, and we have also performed several MySQL to PostgreSQL migrations for Rails applications. In fact, the database.yml file in our modified default Rails application skeleton is preconfigured to use postgres, and not until two weeks ago during my three-month tenure at PLANET ARGON have I had to install MySQL on my shiny company PowerBook.

I myself prefer PostgreSQL for personal projects, but when I am dealing with small things, I sometimes prefer a SQLite3 database if only for the ease of portability!

Also, if you are comfortable with lower-level database programming, you may try your hand at following these instructions to create an ActiveRecord adapter for the RDBMS of your choice.

Comments

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  1. gogo said about 1 hour later:

    You are so right!

  2. Phil said about 2 hours later:

    Indeed. SQLite3 is completely underrated, especially for quick development and RAM saving.

  3. Phil said about 2 hours later:

    Indeed. SQLite3 is completely underrated, especially for quick development and RAM saving.

  4. JV said about 3 hours later:

    SQLite3 is impressive, indeed! I happen to know for a fact that it is getting serious attention from Intel for some of its internal applications.

  5. Nugget said about 4 hours later:

    Moreover, MySQL is completely overrated, especially for applications where the data matters. I have no idea why a person would choose to use MySQL when so many superior alternatives exist.

  6. Nugget said about 4 hours later:

    Moreover, MySQL is completely overrated, especially for applications where the data matters. I have no idea why a person would choose to use MySQL when so many superior alternatives exist.

  7. JV said about 4 hours later:

    I am admittedly biased against MySQL, but the purpose of this post is certainly not to attack MySQL. Rather, it is to remind and inform the community (and potential members thereof) that viable alternatives are out there!

    Happy developing!

  8. caleb said about 13 hours later:

    For our company, the killer “feature” of mysql is phpmyadmin.

    phppgadmin is good, but not nearly as nice as phpmyadmin.

  9. Robby Russell said about 17 hours later:

    Caleb,

    I was just thinking about the last time that I actually used phpMyAdmin or phpPgAdmin…and aside from setting it up for customers, I don’t think that I’ve used it in about a year.

    <code>psql</code> is enough of a killer application for me! ;-)

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