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Aquarium is a framework that implements Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) for Ruby. The premise of AOP is that some concerns in an application will cut across the natural object boundaries of the problem domain. Rather than scatter duplicated code in each object to handle the cross-cutting concern, AOP modularizes the specification of which execution points are affected (called join points) and the actions that should be invoked at those points.

New in V0.4.0: Preliminary support for advising Java classes in JRuby! See the discussion here.

Monkeybars is a library that enables you to make use of Swing from JRuby.

Monkeybars aims to allow you to continue using the GUI editing tools you are used to but makes it easy to write all your application logic in pure Ruby. In fact, with most editors you’ll never even have to look at Java code.

Monkeybars was created from a pretty specific need. Rising Tide Software company was working on a large Swing application and wanted to be able to easily write all the logic in Ruby via JRuby. The initial attempts laid the groundwork for what was to become Monkeybars. Monkeybars has an emphasis on using normal Swing development tools (using Netbeans 6) and especially the ability to sit down with a client and use a visual designer to create the Swing layouts.

You know what, I really wanna learn this whole JavaEE-related thingy……

For some reason it’s unavoidable……. it’s bound to be touched by me……

You see, the trend is going RIA. MVC is going away. AJAX ain’t gonna compete. At least not fully. And will lose in many ways in respect to something like Adobe’s Flex. (Unfortunately there’s not much competitor better than Flex, and fortunately it’d probably be “standard” in the near future). Esp. with Flex going open source. Flex will need a backend, since it’s not a server-side product. There is Flex LiveCycle Data Services ES (what a name!!) by Adobe. There’s also BlazeDS open source. There’s also the excellent WebORB, which is free and open source for Rails and PHP. Oh yeah, it’s free for Rails!

Sometimes it’s nice to use a database with a different paradigm. RDDB might be just what you’re looking for:

RDDB is a Ruby document-oriented database system inspired by CouchDB and developed by Anthony Eden. Querying is accomplished through views using Ruby for the view language and materialization can be handled locally or through a distributed system.

You can create a database and insert documents in a simple enough way:

# First create an database object

database = Rddb::Database.new

# Put some documents into it
database << {:name => 'John', :income => 35000}
database << {:name => 'Bob', :income => 40000}

To “query” the database, you define a “view” using a Ruby block, as such:

Just out is ActiveRecord-JDBC 0.6, the post-RubyConf release.

The sparkly new feature is Rails 2.0 support. In the soon-to-be-released Rails 2.0 (edge), Rails will automatically look for and load an adapter gem based on the name of the adapter you specify in database.yml.

let’s see the example:

development:

  adapter: funkdb

  ...

We can leverage this convention to make it easier than ever to get started using JRuby with your Rails application. So, the first thing new in the 0.6 release is the name. You now install activerecord-jdbc-adapter:

jruby -S gem install activerecord-jdbc-adapter

NetBeans 6 Beta 1 is here!!

Let’s rock the boat

It’s the first significant NetBeans event in probably a year

NetBeans isn’t only for Java geeks anymore, it has tons of Ruby and Ruby on Rails support now!

What surprises me (and delights me!) about this release is that, not like previous NetBeans 6 milestones where NetBeans-Java is bundled with Ruby, they actually make a special Ruby-only version.

The Ruby-only download is mere 19 MB in size!

Aptana IDE is one of my favorite free development tools for Ruby on Rails web applications.

Below is a screenshot of Aptana in action… with a small just-created application.

Over the past few months, Aptana has been adding more and more cool features. In addition to the JavaScript, DOM, CSS, HTML, and AJAX Libraries (including Script.aculo.us) offline reference that has been there for a long time, relatively recent additions include:

• Apple iPhone Development Support
  The Apple iPhone Development Plugin (beta) enables the Aptana IDE to
  increase your iPhone development productivity. You’ll need the newest
  version of Aptana (build 15637) to take advantage of it. [screencast]

A very nice article by Martin Fowler of ThoughtWorks. When you read it from a customer/client/procurer/corporate perspective, it’s quite revealing.  Allow me to quote specific parts that I like:

… JRuby offers the choice of just deploying into a Java container, turning a Rails app into an easily deployed war file. I think this will make Ruby on Rails a much more viable choice in lots of enterprise environments.

There seems an excellent chance that Ruby and Rails could become a significant platform for IT develop over the next few years. We’re already seeing signs of this at ThoughtWorks – 40% of our new business this year in the US is Ruby work.

Think Ruby kicks ass? Then imagine Ruby’s power and fun coupled with the plethora of Java libraries: JRuby.

It’s a real jirb (irb which runs in JRuby) session using the open source LemonSMS and RXTX libraries to communicate with my mobile phone. No more need to Ant-build a whole project just to try a few nifty tricks.

JRuby is now approaching version 1.0 and is already able to run most Ruby applications including Rails, and is being used by software development companies like ThoughtWorks. You can even develop Swing GUI applications in Ruby, and all Java libraries should work with JRuby since it’s still “native” Java.