# "throwing out the old": does Rails really not support **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 23, 2006, 2:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470 "2006-07-23T02:28:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 2:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/1 "2006-07-23T02:28:30Z")
Frankly I’m losing tolerance for the MS “stack.” And I’m intrigued by Rails. But in my outfit I’m not only the web person, but also the application person and the DBA. So when I read that Rails doesn’t want to handle things like “compound keys” I blew right by those claims, thinking, “no way.” But before I go deeper, I should ask: does Rails really prefer to stay out of environments like mine where complex PKs and FKs, stored procedures, and table names that aren’t always drawn from language (plural vs singular names) are deeply embedded in our infrastructure? Do people like me in places like mine just stay out of Rails? Thanks all. ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 2:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/2 "2006-07-23T02:44:46Z")
Frank - Rails is pretty opinionated. This is a good thing starting from scratch, because you get a lot ‘for free’ by following the conventions. But if you’ve got a legacy DB like you describe, you’re not going to be able to follow those conventions… and you’re going to have to do more work to get Rails to work with your system, if it’s even possible. It might require more change than it is worth. So at the risk of pissing off the fanboys: I think Rails is a great framework that pretty much forces me to be a more agile programmer… and that agility seems to be directly opposed to the sort of behemoth legacy system you are describing. You might be able to do it, but you’d be fighting Rails instead of playing to its strengths. - foobario ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 2:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/3 "2006-07-23T02:50:58Z")
On Sun Jul 23, 2006 at 02:28:30AM +0200, Frank Burleigh wrote: > Do people like me in places like mine just stay out of Rails? > much of the ‘magic’ in activerecord relies on convention - columns > automagically mapped to object attributes, integer FKs pointing to > another tables auto-generated integer PK automagically enabling a > “belongs\_to” association, or contraints, getting nice form error > messages for free, by using the model validations rather than doing > things in the db. its not that its impossible, its just creating more work for yourself: making sure the db exceptions get passed properly through, and adding hash attributes to a bunch of app code to explain your unconventional schema. one reward for the suggested conformity is the ability to do everything from one place, and in ruby…another being you can easily switch between db engines, OS’s, web servers…since apache/mongrel/lighttpd and sqlite/postgres/mysql/oracle are just being used as default-configuration off-the-shell tools that you didnt invest time moving your application logic down into… i think that explains the ‘rails way’… ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 2:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/4 "2006-07-23T02:57:10Z")
On Sat Jul 22, 2006 at 05:42:30PM -0700, foobario wrote: > framework that pretty much forces me to be a more agile programmer… and > that agility seems to be directly opposed to the sort of behemoth legacy > system you are describing. You might be able to do it, but you’d be > fighting Rails instead of playing to its strengths. adding suport for a legacy schema, weird foreign key formats, etc, is pretty simple. its just a trip to the API docs and a little typing. i’d still recommend he try rails. i mean would you rather write your html in PHP than markaby? or have a schema that cant be used with postgres since you use mysql and didnt have ActiveRecord::Migration? what about pasting a bunch of javascript when all you wanted to do was page.insert\_element… i found rails incredibly unopinionated. it doesnt care what web server, or db engine or OS you use. theo nly thing it really enforces is that you use Ruby. whats the harm in that? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 3:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/5 "2006-07-23T03:16:01Z")
On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 02:28:30AM +0200, Frank Burleigh wrote: > Do people like me in places like mine just stay out of Rails? > More or less. Rails isn’t about helping you continue to destroy yourself with poor practices, quietly hiding the insanity until it leaps out and consumes your mind – it’s about doing things _differently_. Rails has strong opinions on what you’re doing, and it’s opinion isn’t a positive one. It sounds like you’re in a perfect position to repent your wicked ways, though – you don’t seem to have a large team of trogolodytes to retrain. You can just start working on new stuff The Rails Way and learn to love the simplicity and ease of use. Then when you’re convinced, you can start teasing out some of the deeply embedded cruft and eventually reveal the stark beauty that was hiding beneath the baroque complexity. - Matt (Remove tongue from cheek) – New Yankee Workshop isn’t a “how to” for home hobbyists, it’s “Baywatch” for powertool fetishists. – Geoff Kinnel, ASR ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 6:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/6 "2006-07-23T06:04:42Z")
Matthew P. wrote: > On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 02:28:30AM +0200, Frank Burleigh wrote: > > > Do people like me in places like mine just stay out of Rails? > > More or less. Thanks “foobario,” Carmen and Matt. Those responses are variously cool, helpful and even entertaining. Rails won’t like that we have addresses in an Oracle table called address with primary key (id,type) and the job data in another table called job, or order line items in order\_items keyed (order\_id, item). And the idea that much of our data gets in there with programs written in Delphi or C++ and that our users get their “lists” using 20 reports written in Crystal Reports probably won’t go down well either, eh? 😉 Let me be clear I’m not seeking to malign Rails or the approach. They’re not selling infrastructures, so they have the freedom to make me worry about legacies, heterogeneity and all that. So I summarize this way: - Rails wants to do a lot of work for me. Is there a place where I can read what operations it wants to do for me? For example, sequenced indexes on db inserts are generated how? - Rails prefers db keys not have “substance” in them (like people IDs and types). I’m actually cool with that if I had a clean slate. This would seem to make apps do more of the work. Rails figures that’s good–provided it’s the only door into the data. - Carmen figures it could be worth a go. One thing I’ve learned over years of doing software: don’t fight the man to do your weirdo, edge case stuff unless you’ve learned a lot about the man’s insides first. - My first go doing simple tutorials a few weeks ago actually went quite well. I was able to skip the mysql task list with Oracle tasks and get love. But I had to worry: clearly mysql and postgres get attention from the community, but can I depend on the Oracle and Sybase parts being well cared-for? ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/7 "2006-07-23T16:36:10Z")
Frank Burleigh wrote: > Thanks “foobario,” Carmen and Matt. Those responses are variously cool, > worry about legacies, heterogeneity and all that. > good–provided it’s the only door into the data. In mysql, I think that it just uses the mysql sequence by inserting without an ID, then getting the last id. It just uses the default DB autonumber method. Something that is really nice about ruby, and ergo rails, is that you can override classes and methods in system classes very easily. You don’t edit the system file, just redefine the class/method in your app. you don’t need to make a subclass to override things. Jason ---
**Author:** ![fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/958977/32.png) [@fburleigh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fburleigh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 10:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/throwing-out-the-old-does-rails-really-not-support/99470/8 "2006-07-23T10:40:52Z")
I’ve started work on Composite Primary Keys for Rails: [http://compositekeys.rubyforge.org](http://compositekeys.rubyforge.org)