Building one of the biggest enterprise Rails applications

Stephen Withers
Monday, 13 December 2010 07:14

Business IT - Technology

Attendees at this month's YOW! conference in Mlelbourne gained some insight into the development of one of the world's largest enterprise Rails applications.

Neal Ford, software architect at ThoughtWorks was technical lead for one of the world's largest enterprise Rails applications, and he shared his experience at the YOW! conference for developers in Melbourne earlier this month.



Rails is an open source framework for building database-backed web applications. Wholesale vehicle site OVE.com (Online Vehicle Exchange) needed rebuilding in order to response to a slipping market position, but the existing Java code had become so complex that it couldn't be changed quickly. Ford said the team didn't start by trying to convince the client that Rails was the way to go but instead relied on the principle that "demonstration trumps argument."

The team initially used Mac minis as developer workstations (programmers worked in pairs, so each computer was fitted with two screens and keyboards), but later upgraded to Mac Pros. "Mac OS X rocks [as a development platform]," he said.

They all worked in a single room - even though it was crowded, this arrangement proved more productive than spreading over two or more rooms, he said

Unit tests are easy to do in Rails, said Ford. They were also fast: almost 9000 tests could be completed in 41 seconds by providing mocks or stubs for all units. Functional testing took a little longer, with a set of 4000 tests that could be completed in around 4 minutes.

What else contributed to rapid testing? Please read on.