Re: Ruby framework to build Web apps with RDF, Spira and Triple Stores

Hello Arto,

Thanks for the great information. I am just beginning to digest it all 
now... Lately I have been getting my head around objective-c and luckily 
it hasn't quite exploded my head yet. But I think that learning Ruby 
should be a much more considered and peaceful thing.

I just came across the tweet from @bblfish that a Ruby FOAF+SSL library 
is being worked on: http://github.com/hellekin/foafssl-ruby. This is 
making my decision to use Ruby even more and more feel on track. And 
thanks for your sage words on RDF.rb + Spira + Sinatra stack. It seems 
like it will gel nicely. And I also understand your words about Drupal. 
It has been my bread and butter for about 3 years now, but the sense of 
frustration I have with it (especially in terms of a modelling a more 
"real world" object based system) has been leading me astray ;)

I have been wondering where you disappeared to! hahaha You were very 
active in the Drupal RDF space for quite some time. I can now see where 
you have gone and why...

Cheers,

David

On 18/06/2010 7:32 AM, Arto Bendiken wrote:
> Hi David,
> I would heartily second the several recommendations for Sinatra, which
> can't be beat in terms of how gentle a learning curve it provides:
>
>    <http://www.sinatrarb.com/>
>
> Sinatra doesn't necessarily out of the box provide all the facilities
> you require, but it has a thriving extension ecosystem where you can
> "shop" for additional functionality not unlike you would with Drupal:
>
>    <http://rubygems.org/search?query=sinatra->
>
> You can, naturally, also use any Rack middleware with Sinatra, so add
> to the above list also the still larger list of gems at:
>
>    <http://rubygems.org/search?query=rack->
>
> The Rack::LinkedData gem that Nick mentions is such a
> Sinatra-compatible middleware:
>
>    <http://datagraph.rubyforge.org/rack-linkeddata/>
>
> And for authentication in particular, check out Warden:
>
>    <http://wiki.github.com/hassox/warden/>
>
> For something built on top of Sinatra but with more of the goodies
> prepackaged, check out Padrino which comes closer to being a
> Rails-like full-stack framework:
>
>    <http://www.padrinorb.com/>
>
> We are finding RDF.rb + Spira + Sinatra a very potent combination for
> developing Linked Data-enabled backends for our clients. Plug in
> SproutCore (or perhaps Cappuccino in your case, since you mention
> familiarity with Objective-C) for the frontend with just a bit of glue
> to connect up its model layer with that of Spira, and up-to-par
> data-driven RDF apps don't seem that daunting anymore.
>
> In fact, with all the RDF infrastructure that's now emerging for Ruby,
> combined with the high productivity of the language itself and the
> availability of awesome frameworks like Rack, Sinatra, and Rails 3.0,
> it's getting ever less interesting to go back to Drupal for any
> application development - despite 5+ years of prior experience and
> commitment to that platform. Consider yourself duly warned ;-)
>
>

Received on Friday, 18 June 2010 02:15:17 UTC