I’m considering implementing a PHP based site that display videos with
quite
some database logic to Rails. Now we were considering publishing the
site
on DVD too.
Is that possible (e.g. with RubyScript2Exe)? How fast is database
performance going to be? Currently there are movies inside the database
but
we can extract them if necessary. The database scheme is quite large and
the number of rows are around 10.000 for multiple tables. The system
heavily relies on joins of multiple tables.
We are also considering running the dynamic (database based) version on
the
site and reducing the DVD version to something more static. That would
work
if we strip off some heavy search logic. Would that be reasonable in
Rails,
can some plugin help me generating static pages?
Can those two solutions be combined? So we would run a dynamic website
and
then once in a while in some magic way we can generate an up to date DVD
from the site. Is that possible?
If you need more details on the site I’ll be happy to provide them, this
project means a lot to me.
rubyScript2Exe and tart2ruby work just fine for my small apps… you
can
even set them up so that the logs, database, and other files are stored
in a
separate place, so the user can have data that persists.
For the most part running a database driven web app from a CD or DVD
just
isn’t feasable.
There is a solution for this, but honestly the usability of it is
questionable.
Using a knoppix derivitave called Lamppix you can place a fully
functional
web server on CD and allow your customer to boot their computer to a
preset
linux environment where you have preprogrammed your web application.
This
environment gives you a fully functional database and web application
environment.
The user can peruse your application and make any changes to the
database
but the database will be restored to it’s preprogrammed state when the
system is rebooted. Any changes the you want to persist would have to
be
saved elsewhere.
This approach is about the only way I know of do have a live, dynamic,
website on cd, but is really only useful for demonstrating applications.
To complicate matters the lamppix distro is geared for php development,
not
to ruby and would have to be customized. Which is a skill in and of
itself
Scale to what? You’re running it off of a DVD or CD drive. The
bottleneck
will be data retrieval from an optical device. Your database will be a
fixed
size. You’ll only have one user (if running off of a cd).
I don’t know your project so I can’t say it it will scale. You need to
answer the “will it scale” question for yourself by trying it.