# Building a standalone application with RoR

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [July 6, 2006, 1:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334 "2006-07-06T13:53:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 1:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/1 "2006-07-06T13:53:41Z")

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Hello,

I have to code a small application for a car repair shop running under  
Windows (98 SE but may be my client could upgrade to 2000) and using RoR  
is my definite choise !

The app will be powered by WebRick (which is enough powerfull for a  
small app used by only ONE user at a time)

My questions are targeted to the best database to use… I had a look to  
SQLite and Firebird but support for both of them is not yet complete  
under RoR

Which of these one is the best choice under RoR ? Is there another  
choice for an embeddable database ? I would prefer to avoid MySQL in  
that case…

Thanks

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**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/2 "2006-07-06T14:08:10Z")

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I use sqlite3 in a small production site and I’ve not had any  
problems. I haven’t run into any areas where Rails support of sqlite  
was “incomplete.” My deployment environment is FreeBSD. YMMV on  
Windows.

-TJ

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**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 4:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/3 "2006-07-06T16:48:13Z")

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It seems ([SQL Features That SQLite Does Not Implement](http://www.sqlite.org/omitted.html)) that sqlite doesn’t  
support the DROP COLUMN statement… Was it a problem for you (in  
migration file or even in development process if not using Rails  
migrations) ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/4 "2006-07-06T16:54:50Z")

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I didn’t hit that in the particular application I was referencing. I  
only recently updated it to 1.0 from 0.12. Since the schema was  
already defined, my only migration file is 001\_. But thanks for the  
heads up; I will look into that.

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**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 5:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/5 "2006-07-06T17:29:59Z")

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BTW have you tried a remove\_column migration with sqlite3? If so, what  
were your results? This ticket from long ago indicates remove\_column  
works with sqlite.

[http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/1771](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/1771)

I will try it later.

-TJ

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**Author:** ![nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/65b543/32.png) [@nuno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nuno)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/building-a-standalone-application-with-ror/97334/6 "2006-07-06T18:26:13Z")

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SQLite3 works fine for my project. Use RubyScript2Exe and Tar2Ruby and  
you  
can build a nice installable, self-contained application for your users.