Gui front-end for database (jruby + swing + jdbc) or (ruby + (gtk || fxruby) + sequel)

Ruby
1

Hello,

Did anyone created a medium size database gui application using the
combinations mentioned? I am trying to decide what to use and would
like to hear about your experiences.

My current analysis:

GUI toolkits:

GTK2: + mature

  • good API(used it a bit for toy applications)
  • no table widget
    FXRuby + mature
  • good API (used it a bit for toy applications)
  • table control
  • ?

Swing + mature

  • never used it
    ? complex

Ruby implementations:

JRuby + can distribute all application as .jar?

  • jdbc (but I only used it for very basic stuff)
  • access to java libraries
  • will it be ever as fast as ruby 1.9/2.x ?

ruby (matz version):

  • “the standard ruby”
  • fast implementation
  • sequel (I have used this in few basic web applications)
  • harder (but not impossible) to distribute the app as one file

The database server will be postgresql, but the application has to also
work standalone/off-site (and synchronise the data with the main
server). For the standalone database, the choice is sqlite (sequel) or
hsql (jdbc) - or i just install postgresql also under windows as local
server.

So far, the ruby/FXRuby/sequel looks the most promising.

Vlad

2

On Jan 8, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Vladimir K. wrote:

Did anyone created a medium size database gui application using the
combinations mentioned? I am trying to decide what to use and would
like to hear about your experiences.

This isn’t a database-driven application per se, rather a tool for
working with databases, but it’s based on Ruby and FXRuby:

http://www.insula.cz/dbtalk/

I occasionally get queries from people on the FXRuby mailing list who
are building apps using ActiveRecord as the backend, and so that
apparently works pretty well too.

Hope this helps,

Lyle

3

Vladimir K. wrote:

Swing + mature

  • never used it
    ? complex

It’s complex, in that it’s very complete and very flexible. Sometimes
too flexible. However in Ruby it’s a lot nicer…it becomes a really
easy GUI library to work with.

JRuby + can distribute all application as .jar?

Yes.

  • jdbc (but I only used it for very basic stuff)

Yes, and other than query differences you won’t have to juggle native
libraries in any way. And if you used something like ActiveRecord, you
wouldn’t have to juggle queries either in most cases.

  • access to java libraries

Of course.

  • will it be ever as fast as ruby 1.9/2.x ?

I love that this comes up as a concern. Ruby 1.9 has many specific
optimizations where it’s pretty fast (like integer math) and has other
areas where performance has degraded (eval and string operations come to
mind). I would recommend you benchmark whatever code you’re looking to
run on all impls before you make decisions about performance; you might
be surprised. At any rate, the answer is yes, we’ll start aiming at
implementing the same optimizations in JRuby, probably after the 1.1
final release.

  • Charlie