Rails application on Solaris OS

Hello,

I'm thinking to build an application that will work directly with the Solaris operating system. It will be consisted of a REST-ful architecture to provide customization and different interactions with Solaris OS. Basically my data source would be the Solaris OS. I'm wondering is it worth trying to build this in Rails? Since the application is not database driven i'm starting to question myself if not all the amazing functionality provided by ROR becomes obsolete like object relations and all the Active Record design ? Any suggestions would be more than appreciated. Thank in advance.

Vadim Comanescu

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957889:

Hello,

I'm thinking to build an application that will work directly with the Solaris operating system. It will be consisted of a REST-ful architecture to provide customization and different interactions with Solaris OS. Basically my data source would be the Solaris OS. I'm wondering is it worth trying to build this in Rails? Since the application is not database driven i'm starting to question myself if not all the amazing functionality provided by ROR becomes obsolete like object relations and all the Active Record design ?

Particularly with Rails 3 (now that ActiveModel's been abstracted), you don't necessarily need to use a DB to get ActiveRecord-like features.

But I agree that a priori, this seems like a strange use case for Rails. Sinatra or something else might be more appropriate...

...or why not just use Webmin?

What is this application supposed to do in detail?

Any suggestions would be more than appreciated. Thank in advance.

Vadim Comanescu

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote in post #957899:

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957889:

Hello,

I'm thinking to build an application that will work directly with the Solaris operating system. It will be consisted of a REST-ful architecture to provide customization and different interactions with Solaris OS. Basically my data source would be the Solaris OS. I'm wondering is it worth trying to build this in Rails? Since the application is not database driven i'm starting to question myself if not all the amazing functionality provided by ROR becomes obsolete like object relations and all the Active Record design ?

Particularly with Rails 3 (now that ActiveModel's been abstracted), you don't necessarily need to use a DB to get ActiveRecord-like features.

But I agree that a priori, this seems like a strange use case for Rails. Sinatra or something else might be more appropriate...

...or why not just use Webmin?

What is this application supposed to do in detail?

Any suggestions would be more than appreciated. Thank in advance.

Vadim Comanescu

Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser http://www.marnen.org marnen@marnen.org

Hi,

The application will be a web based application that will handle the configuration of an opensolaris system and here it includes : networking, active directory integration and other solaris functionality. The data layer will be represented by the system itself. Then the application will grow toward administrating the native zfs filesystem and here i talk about managing large diskpools, nfs sharing, iscsi sharing and integration with virtualization mechanisms as VMware. What i'm trying to figure out is if Rails can provide me the ORM needed for this kind of stuff or should am i doomed to build my own from scratch. From what i see using the Solaris system as an Active Resource in Rails it does not work considering that is not a REST service. So this is bassicaly what i need to do and i'm just wondering if Rails is suited for this kind of business logic.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957907: [...]

Hi,

The application will be a web based application that will handle the configuration of an opensolaris system and here it includes : networking, active directory integration and other solaris functionality.

[...]

Don't even bother building anything, then. Just use Webmin or one of the many similar applications that's already out there.

Best,

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957907: [...]

What i'm trying to figure out is if Rails can provide me the ORM needed for this kind of stuff or should am i doomed to build my own from scratch.

There's no R to build an ORM to. The standard Ruby library does provide a decent filesystem interface, though.

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote in post #957911:

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957907: [...]

What i'm trying to figure out is if Rails can provide me the ORM needed for this kind of stuff or should am i doomed to build my own from scratch.

There's no R to build an ORM to. The standard Ruby library does provide a decent filesystem interface, though.

Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser http://www.marnen.org marnen@marnen.org

I was thinking of mapping every system resource in an entity (object) in my application. Also considering that it will have a rich web interface for configuration im thinking pure scripting just wont do it without a backend server where the application runs. And it would be really hard from what i'm guessing now to actually reflect the complex interactions in the system without a well designed layered architecture for this. That's why i was wondering about rails considering the MVC architecture and the implementation of object aggregation like has_a or belongs_to or any other relationships that might have helped me alot. But i guess rails for this would be an overkill.

Thanks again.

Vadim Comanescu wrote in post #957914: [...]

The main reason for which im trying to build this is for the configuration of the native zfs filesystem on solaris - building diskpools, handling iscsi sharing, integration with VMware and other solutions for virtualization. And that is not present in webmin or any other app that configures unix systems.

Can you do that from a high-level application? I don't know how Solaris configuration works.

I was thinking of mapping every system resource in an entity (object) in my application.

That might make sense.

Also considering that it will have a rich web interface for configuration im thinking pure scripting

What do you mean by "pure scripting"?

just wont do it without a backend server where the application runs.

Uh, what? Wouldn't the application just run on the box that it was supposed to configure?

And it would be really hard from what i'm guessing now to actually reflect the complex interactions in the system without a well designed layered architecture for this. That's why i was wondering about rails considering the MVC architecture and the implementation of object aggregation like has_a or belongs_to or any other relationships that might have helped me alot.

has_many and belongs_to are only meaningful with a relational database. Ruby objects aggregate beautifully without these.

Don't be so dazzled by Rails that you forget what core Ruby offers.

But i guess rails for this would be an overkill.

Well, ActiveRecord would be unnecessary (I think), which *probably* means that Rails would be overkill...but try it! Start with something like Sinatra and see how far you get; be prepared to switch to Rails (or something else entirely) if necessary.

Thanks again.

Best,