So, I’m sitting here learning Ruby and Rails, and a thought starts to emerge: I wonder if I could use things like ActiveRecord separate from Rails for writing command line database maintenance scripts in Ruby, for example? Then I start to see other Rails features that also might be very useful outside of a Web application, and then I start wondering if Rails could be used not just as a Web application framework, but as a general application framework, in the way that some people have used (or at least suggested using) Struts and Spring in the Java world.

It seems in the last few weeks, there has been an especially hot debate around Ruby on Rails (RoR) and Grails. The debate on both sides has been respectful, and most importantly, a lot of good ideas are being exchanged.

The iBatis data mapping framework for Java, .NET and Ruby increases developer productivity by facilitating database storage at a higher level than say, JDBC, without the complexity of larger object-relational mapping frameworks. This introduction is intended to show Java developers how to quickly integrate iBatis with a legacy MySQL database.