# Enterprise Rails Apps **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 11, 2006, 11:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101 "2006-01-11T23:16:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 11:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/1 "2006-01-11T23:16:41Z")
Is there a place I can get a list of “enterprise” Rails applications? Apparently, even though I’ve looked at the wiki and cited the examples there, there are some at my organization who still can’t find proof that Rails is usable in an enterprise setting. Would you fine folks be able to tell me about some large-scale projects that could be classified as “enterprise” projects? People here don’t care about number of hits, they care about complexity. Something along the scale of administrative systems for a university. They’re reading blogs by Java folks who are doing their best to say that Rails can’t cut it in the enterprise arena (Ted Neward). Brian H. Web D. Learning & Technology Services Schofield 3-B University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire 715 836 3585 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/2 "2006-01-11T23:37:52Z")
On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 16:13 -0600, Hogan, Brian P. wrote: > They’re reading blogs by Java folks who are doing their best to say > that Rails can’t cut it in the enterprise arena (Ted Neward). One of our consulting clients (100 person company) has a Rails application that powers their production facility (manages huge printers, order & job tracking, etc). Daily, they process approx 4-10 thousand orders and Rails powers everything in the production side… all the way to the shipping department and out the door the products go. It was pretty neat to see people scanning bar codes on products into a Rails application. 🙂 We’re working on a case study with them and hope to have some information to share in the near future. Cheers, -Robby – /\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* - Robby R., Founder & Executive Director \* - PLANET ARGON, LLC | [www.planetargon.com](http://www.planetargon.com) \* - Ruby on Rails Development, Consulting, and Hosting \* - Portland, Oregon | p: 503.351.4730 | f: 815.642.4068 \* - blog: [www.robbyonrails.com](http://www.robbyonrails.com) | book: [www.programmingrails.com](http://www.programmingrails.com) \* \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*/ ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/3 "2006-01-12T00:02:06Z")
On Jan 11, 2006, at 2:37 PM, Robby R. wrote: > > Something along the scale of administrative systems for a university. > > products go. > > It was pretty neat to see people scanning bar codes on products into a > Rails application. 🙂 > > We’re working on a case study with them and hope to have some > information to share in the near future. > > Cheers, > > -Robby ``` The Yakima Herald Newspaper that I work for has their entire web ``` presence and intranet running on rails and ruby. I recently recreated an aging point of sale and circulation issue tracking system on our intranet that runs on rails. Also our employee review process and interdepartmental meeting schedule runs on your guessed it, rails. Also the prepress nightly reporting process and Advertiser Tear Sheets runs on rails. Plus I have a ton of pure ruby code that processes text and pushes it around through the different departments ``` The coolest thing is that I have written all of this stuff by myself ``` in the last 7 or 8 months including the [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) website redesign and backend. That speaks volumes as to the efficiency and development speed of rails and ruby itself. ``` Our paper has around 350 employees and serves a 250k population and ``` our website gets a lot of traffic. I know that the word enterprise is like loaded dice so take this for what it is. But I would definitely call our setup here a small enterprise and I have yet to even come close to hitting any limitations and I think that rails can scale _way_ further then I am pushing it here right now. ``` Also the website is not your typical rails app. It runs on 5 ``` different data sources with only two of them inside the building. And the majority of the data is integrated without ActiveRecord at all. Cheers- -Ezra Z. Yakima Herald-Republic WebMaster [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) 509-577-7732 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/4 "2006-01-12T01:27:16Z")
On Jan 11, 2006, at 3:13 PM, csn wrote: > > an aging point of sale and circulation issue tracking system on our > > > > Our paper has around 350 employees and serves a 250k population and > > our website gets a lot of traffic. I know that the word enterprise is > > like loaded dice so take this for what it is. But I would definitely > > call our setup here a small enterprise and I have yet to even come > > close to hitting any limitations and I think that rails can scale > > _way_ further then I am pushing it here right now. > > > > Also the website is not your typical rails app. It runs on 5 > > different data sources with only two of them inside the building. And > > the majority of the data is integrated without ActiveRecord at all. ``` The web site and intranet apps run on a small cluster. We have a ``` dual g5 xserv that runs lighttpd/fcgi to serve rails and static content. the we have a dual xeon debian box for postgresql. And one more debian box that hosts about 20 client websites and runs more fcgi listeners for the main site. For what’s going on right now, we are not even pushing any of this hardware very hard. All three machines average about 10% cpu usage at any given time. ``` There is also another xserve for the newsroom database that holds ``` all the locally written stories and photos in a proprietary Baseview database that has a super crappy API called LiveIQ script. So my model that handles that creates a small DSL that converts queries in ruby using blocks into the liveiq script on the fly. A lot of the data on the site comes from this db. ``` We also get a ton of content from the AP newswire. This comes in as ``` very nasty xml thats base64 encoded. This data gets heavily munged into the format that gets displayed on the web. We also have an xml- rpc connection to the Seattle Times(our parent newspaper) to grab content from then as well. ``` Then we have our local postgresql db that runs the content ``` management system on the site. I am working on a new circulation system that is a large project. It will include publishing the entire newspaper online in a pdf format so we can sell digital subscriptions. People that get the actual paper will get the online version for free. Plus i am building a blog and photo gallery system that anyone with a digital or physical subscription will get an account on when they sign up. this will be a blog system like blogger or something similar in the fact that it will be one application that runs multiple peoples blogs in a self contained way. And when this goes live you will be able to click a link on any news item on the site and get a list of the bloggers in our system that have blogged about that news article. ``` We have around 60-70k subscribers right now so right off the bat the ``` new blog system will need to support that many users and when people can get a digital subscription to the paper we see the amount of users growing rapidly. There will be some cool social networking tie ins between all the bloggers on our system about local events and meetups and the like. ``` Since I am the only coder in the whole company, the only reason I ``` even dream of building this system myself is because I can use rails to do it. The way rails is organized promotes very good practices if you use it to its fullest(read tests) that I can take on a project of this size on my own. I am very productive in rails and I have a really easy time coming back to code later and being able to instantly see what I was doing and be able to refactor at will. Cheers- -Ezra Z. Yakima Herald-Republic WebMaster [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) 509-577-7732 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/5 "2006-01-12T00:13:03Z")
What’s the hardware behind all that? csn Ezra Z. wrote: > The Yakima Herald Newspaper that I work for has their entire web > presence and intranet running on rails and ruby. I recently recreated > an aging point of sale and circulation issue tracking system on our > intranet that runs on rails. Also our employee review process and > interdepartmental meeting schedule runs on your guessed it, rails. > Also the prepress nightly reporting process and Advertiser Tear > Sheets runs on rails. Plus I have a ton of pure ruby code that > processes text and pushes it around through the different departments > > The coolest thing is that I have written all of this stuff by myself > in the last 7 or 8 months including the [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) > website redesign and backend. That speaks volumes as to the > efficiency and development speed of rails and ruby itself. > > Our paper has around 350 employees and serves a 250k population and > our website gets a lot of traffic. I know that the word enterprise is > like loaded dice so take this for what it is. But I would definitely > call our setup here a small enterprise and I have yet to even come > close to hitting any limitations and I think that rails can scale > _way_ further then I am pushing it here right now. > > Also the website is not your typical rails app. It runs on 5 > different data sources with only two of them inside the building. And > the majority of the data is integrated without ActiveRecord at all. > > Cheers- > -Ezra Z. > Yakima Herald-Republic > WebMaster > [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) > 509-577-7732 > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/6 "2006-01-12T02:33:42Z")
Ezra Z. wrote: > The Yakima Herald Newspaper that I work for has … I would love to see this and other Rails success stories written up as wiki pages. We could have a whole section of them! ## -r Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development: [http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume.html](http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume.html) Contact information: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid, +1 650-873-7841 ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 3:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/7 "2006-01-12T03:31:32Z")
On Jan 11, 2006, at 5:32 PM, Rich M. wrote: > Ezra Z. wrote: > > > The Yakima Herald Newspaper that I work for has … > > I would love to see this and other Rails success stories > written up as wiki pages. We could have a whole section > of them! Rich- ``` I did a fairly extensive write up of the website rebuild here[1] on ``` my blog. Its a bit outdated now as it doesn’t cover the cluster but it still has a good look at the dev and deploy process. Cheers- -Ezra Z. WebMaster Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid 509-577-7732 [http://brainspl.at/articles/2005/11/03/from-start-to-launch-http-](http://brainspl.at/articles/2005/11/03/from-start-to-launch-http-) yakimaherald-com OR [http://rubyurl.com/8ko](http://rubyurl.com/8ko) ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/enterprise-rails-apps/61101/8 "2006-01-12T18:34:56Z")
Enterprise Rails AppsHi Brain We are writing a clinical research administration workflow system for Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ruby on Rails and XSB Prolog (ie an enterprise application of comparable complexity). If you have full control of the database schemas and use Web Services or dRuby where appropriate, RoR is an excellent framework for dealing with application complexity. Ruby on Rails keeps the solution to straightforward problems straightforward and I would argue that Ruby is superior to Java in making difficult problems more tractable, but you need very good developers to solve complex, enterprise problems, whatever language or framework you choose. Steven Beales Chief Software Engineer Medical Decision Logic 724 Dulaney Valley Road Towson Maryland 21204 410-828-8948 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid “Hogan, Brian P.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote in message news:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid… Is there a place I can get a list of “enterprise” Rails applications? Apparently, even though I’ve looked at the wiki and cited the examples there, there are some at my organization who still can’t find proof that Rails is usable in an enterprise setting. Would you fine folks be able to tell me about some large-scale projects that could be classified as “enterprise” projects? People here don’t care about number of hits, they care about complexity. Something along the scale of administrative systems for a university. They’re reading blogs by Java folks who are doing their best to say that Rails can’t cut it in the enterprise arena (Ted Neward). Brian H. Web D. Learning & Technology Services Schofield 3-B University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire 715 836 3585 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid * * * * * * Rails mailing list removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails)