Experiences using Database.com with Ruby on Rails

Rails
1

Hello,

My boss is really pushing us to switch to using Database.com for our
database. He seems to think it’s the solution to every problem we’ve
never
had. I’ve never worked with it before, so I don’t know how it compares
to
using plain, old, ActiveRecord. I’m hoping to get some candid feedback
from
any Ruby developers who have used this before. Do you think it’s worth
it
to switch from using a “standard” database (i.e. MySQL, Postgres,
MongoDB).

Thanks,
Andrew

2

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 9:47 AM, Andrew [email protected] wrote:

Hello,

My boss is really pushing us to switch to using Database.com for our
database. He seems to think it’s the solution to every problem we’ve never
had. I’ve never worked with it before, so I don’t know how it compares to
using plain, old, ActiveRecord. I’m hoping to get some candid feedback from
any Ruby developers who have used this before. Do you think it’s worth it to
switch from using a “standard” database (i.e. MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB).

did you see this

3

If you’re boss can’t articulate the benefits to you for why he (or
she) wants you to do this – and they’re pushing you to undertake a
technical solution that could make you’re development more complex
without understanding the impact of it - then they are an idiot.
Please feel free to tell them I said so.

It might be worth sharing with him that both Heroku and Engineyard
also provide cloud-based databases that are tightly integrated into
their overall offering – and that as a result they provide good tools
to make sure everything is backed up and safe without requiring you to
really do much. They take almost no time to administer as well (adding
a slave replicant database on engineyard takes like 4-5 clicks of the
mouse.) You could use a third-party cloud database (like
database.com), but why not just use the one that’s already integrated
with your application platform? (You may also score points for telling
him that Salesforce also owns Heroku, so it’s a pretty similar
offering.)

If that doesn’t work, I’d recommend brushing off your resume and going
to work for someone who knows what they’re doing. This is probably not
the last time this person will push their half-baked ideas on you.