Experiences using Database.com with Ruby on Rails

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello,

My boss is really pushing us to switch to using Database.com for our database. He seems to think it’s the solution to every problem we’ve never had. I’ve never worked with it before, so I don’t know how it compares to using plain, old, ActiveRecord. I’m hoping to get some candid feedback from any Ruby developers who have used this before. Do you think it’s worth it to switch from using a “standard” database (i.e. MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB).

Thanks,

Andrew

2

Hello,

My boss is really pushing us to switch to using Database.com for our database. He seems to think it's the solution to every problem we've never had. I've never worked with it before, so I don't know how it compares to using plain, old, ActiveRecord. I'm hoping to get some candid feedback from any Ruby developers who have used this before. Do you think it's worth it to switch from using a "standard" database (i.e. MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB).

did you see this

3

If you're boss can't articulate the benefits to you for why he (or she) wants you to do this -- and they're pushing you to undertake a technical solution that could make you're development more complex without understanding the impact of it - then they are an idiot. Please feel free to tell them I said so.

It might be worth sharing with him that both Heroku and Engineyard also provide cloud-based databases that are tightly integrated into their overall offering -- and that as a result they provide good tools to make sure everything is backed up and safe without requiring you to really do much. They take almost no time to administer as well (adding a slave replicant database on engineyard takes like 4-5 clicks of the mouse.) You could use a third-party cloud database (like database.com), but why not just use the one that's already integrated with your application platform? (You may also score points for telling him that Salesforce also owns Heroku, so it's a pretty similar offering.)

If that doesn't work, I'd recommend brushing off your resume and going to work for someone who knows what they're doing. This is probably not the last time this person will push their half-baked ideas on you.