Ruby on Rails Dynamic Web Application Development

The client was a European home and garden improvement retailer who needs a web based case management system to support their after-sales service. The new system should allow their customers to submit their problems to customer support staff simply via web browser. Or customers can choose online support functionality to chat with customer support staff directly. The system should allow admin to manage received cases and send them to the appropriate after-sales support staff. The system also should generate weekly, monthly, and annual report whit choose which items will be generated in the report.

After compared several leading open source tools, such as PHP, Java, and Ruby on Rails (RoR), our web development team recommended the Ruby on Rails for this web based application. Considering the benefit of Ruby on Rails, for example, rapid development and prototypes, structured code and neat markup, interchangeable databases, database schema control, and with Ruby on Rails, our web development team helped the client to reduce the application’s maintenance from a long-term perspective.

Technologies and Tools Used

Main Programming Language: Ruby on Rails – is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language, it uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to organize application programming.

IDE (Integrated Development Environment): RadRails IDE – is a Rapid Application Development IDE for the Ruby on Rails framework. The goal of RadRails is to provide Ruby on Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test and deploy their applications.

Web Servers included:

WEBrick – is a Ruby library providing simple HTTP web server services. It is used by the Ruby on Rails framework to test applications in a development environment.

Mongrel – is an open source HTTP library and web server written in Ruby. It is used to run Ruby web application and presents a standard HTTP interface.

Lighttpd – is an open source web server more optimized for speed-critical environments than common products while remaining standards compliant, secure and flexible.

System Architecture

Achievements

- With the Lighttpd web server, our web development team improved the CPU’s performance, such as lower CPU utilization and ease-of-use.

- Web development team adopted Ajax to enhance the dynamic web application’s usability and performance.

- The web dynamic web application supported various web browsers, for example, IE6, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

- RoR support Web 2.0 when compared to other technologies. Admin just update a part of the web page instead of the entire page being re-loaded. The page response time will be shorter.

- Our software testers implemented automated test functionality for Ruby on Rails that generated test files automatically to design test cases.

Read More