I'm working on an app which will be receiving periodic snapshots from a government database. This database is somewhat of a mess, so using the design pattern of writing a wrapper around a legacy database is not an option. Instead, I'd like to write an import script that opens a connection to the legacy database and the Rail app's database and then selectively imports data.
What is a good way to do this? It looks like I need to use the ActiveRecord::Base's establish connection, but where/how should I place this script so that I can create ActiveRecord objects and save them to the new database? It doesn't need to be run from the website.
Thanks!