# ActiveRecord with Legacy Database **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 13, 2006, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669 "2006-02-13T16:38:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/1 "2006-02-13T16:38:01Z")
Hiya RoR gurus, I work at a .NET shop, but I enjoy learning Ruby. So, I wanna prototype some of our product’s screens using Rails (and hopefullly AJAX). One thing I’m not sure about, since I’m a Rails noob, is whether ActiveRecord will get along with our database… So I have two questions: - Can I have ActiveRecord get along with our PascalCase naming conventions? - We ALWAYS have two fields as our primary key: Id and EffectiveYear, which is an integer containing a year and a version, ie 200600000, 200600001, … This is a strict requirement, so can I get ActiveRecord to do this (easily)? Thanks in advance, ZachZ ---
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 4:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/2 "2006-02-13T16:48:11Z")
Hi, I’m not a guru, but I also work with legacy tables. > - Can I have ActiveRecord get along with our PascalCase naming > conventions? > I think so. Mostly anything in rails can be overriden. If your tables’ > names are not underscored, you can set\_table\_name in the models to your > PascalCase names. And you can always access your columns’ names through > the model using the PascalCase without a hitch. > - We ALWAYS have two fields as our primary key: Id and > EffectiveYear, which is an integer containing a year and a version, ie > 200600000, 200600001, … This is a strict requirement, so can I get > ActiveRecord to do this (easily)? > My partial conclusion is that you cannot specify primary key with two > columns in the current rails. My workaround is to create a view that > combines the two keys into one key called id, and for any tables that > FKs this id, I created a view with a FK alias of the name > referencedtable\_id just so I don’t need to do overriding in the models. > Sinmce you’re just prototyping, this can be quick and effective. good luck! ---
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 4:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/3 "2006-02-13T16:56:47Z")
I can try making few views like you said for a prototype, but we have A LOT of tables, so that would not be optimal in the future! Hmm… Maybe there’s some more ideas out there…? ---
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/4 "2006-02-13T17:10:25Z")
> I can try making few views like you said for a prototype, but we have > A LOT of tables, so that would not be optimal in the future! Hmm… > Maybe there’s some more ideas out there…? Once you’ve tried on a few views, you could extract some general trends out of your legacy tables and automate the process (write a tool which will generate the rails models with the default overriden for instance). hope this helps Thibaut ---
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/5 "2006-02-13T17:11:13Z")
> Once you’ve tried on a few views, you could extract some general trends > out of your legacy tables and automate the process (write a > tool which will generate the rails models with the default overriden for > instance). edit: the tool in question could be ruby+erb, or CodeSmith if you want to do that in c# 🙂 cheers -T ---
**Author:** ![Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/85e7bf/32.png) [@Zachary\_Zolton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zachary_Zolton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-with-legacy-database/53669/6 "2006-02-13T17:14:20Z")
Not a bad idea… They all have the same two fields for primary key: Id and EffectiveYear