Version 2.0 of Ruby on Rails was released Friday [2007-12-07]. Rails
offers a framework of tools for developing Web sites using Ruby, a
programming language invented in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto. Hansson,
of Web application developer 37signals, joined the Paris on Rails
conference by video-link to present the changes: "In 2.0 we're making
a really strong statement about RESTful application design," he said,
referring to the new version's preference for REST (Representational
State Transfer) rather than SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) for
passing messages in Web applications. Ruby now has support from industry
stalwarts like Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Sun recently hired the
developers of JRuby, an implementation of Ruby for the Java virtual
machine that allows Ruby on Rails developers to make use of the work
enterprises have already put into developing Java application frameworks.
Microsoft, for its part, hired the developer of RubyCLR, a bridge between
Ruby and Microsoft's .Net framework, allowing Rails developers to
similarly leverage businesses' .Net legacy. In the security space, Rails
2.0 makes it easier to protect against phishing, with provisions to
guard against CRSF (cross-site request forgery) intrusions. Safeguards
against XSF (cross-site forgery) attacks are included as well. Also
featured in Rails 2.0 is improved testing support and backing for Atom
feeds. Hansson: "We're making it really easy for applications to emit
feeds, which is critical to application updates." Another new feature in
version 2.0 is a framework called ActiveResource, which encapsulates Web
services and makes them as easy to use as databases, Hansson said. This
is similar to the ActiveRecord feature for encapsulating database calls
in Rails.
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