# Why Active vs Action?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-active-vs-action/117174>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 14, 2007, 10:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-active-vs-action/117174 "2007-10-14T10:23:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![S-gw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@S-gw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/S-gw)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2007, 10:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-active-vs-action/117174/1 "2007-10-14T10:23:06Z")

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Just wondering what the relevance is of Active vs Action prefixes to  
the Rails libraries?

I get Active Record likely comes from Fowler’s Enterprise Patterns  
book, but what semantic difference does an Active lib vs an Action  
lib have?

– gw