DHH Opens RailsConf2007

Hey guys, hope you are all doing well. I haven't uploaded any lecture notes recently as we've been real busy and the internet connectivity is dicey at best here. I did want to update you guys with what DHH said this morning! The rest of my notes will just have to wait.

Rails 2.0 was the topic, although much of what DHH showed us is available in Rails now. These are the things he mentioned that I think we should look into using:

• Atom
• OpenID
• Ruby_debugger (created by someone with the first name of Kent) Note: I think we need to look into using this now. We finally have a step-thru debugging tool!!!!!!!
• HTTP Performance enhancements:

1. query cache (used automatically, caches SQL so db trips are minimized)
2. asset cache (we need to look into this one as soon as possible. By adding ':cache => true' to the javascript and stylesheet include tags, all .js and .css files get zipped into two files; all.js and all.css when being transmitted to clients. This may be the help we all need with slow page refreshes but, may most help Michael from feeling like he wants to jump off a bridge while he works on look and feel!)
   

• ActiveResource (we need to start using this. we get active record goodness and, free for nothing, the ability to produce xml, txt, csv, files too)
• Config/Initializers - this comes out of environment.rb and into it's own file structure
• Sexy Migrations - instead of the redundancy of specifying column name and data type (where the same type is typically specified over and over), you now specify the data type and then a list of all the columns that are that type
• HTTP Authentication - for feeds, do we need this for secure data feeds (should we develop any)?