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MVC architecture and VFP on Rails

After hearing about Brian's speech to the Chicago Fox User Group and then reading more from Randy Jean's Blog: Exploring VFP on Rails, I just wanted to try it on my own.



Randy's post goes into a lot of great detail with some code, so I'll let you read it there but the benefit of VFP in a Rails style environment is that it's SUPER easy to create an application to get you started: create a web share and register a single very small COM server. That's it.



And then you can customize it on the fly.



I know of a few developers who downplay the "buzz" of Rails, noting that it's not as scalable as some environments or that all of the tools just aren't there. 37Signals, part of the group that created RubyonRails or at least made it super popular with their BaseCamp and other related sites, addressed this in their Getting Real book - with their approach of interface first, then worry about scalability. (you can read it online here) - the main take-away from that was:



"If you’ve got a huge number of people overloading your system then huzzah!

That’s one swell problem to have. The truth is the overwhelming

majority of web apps are never going to reach that stage."



Many VFP developers may cringe at that approach - you should plan for scalability - but one can't argue with the success that this company has had with it and if you can build in new features in days instead of months, it might be worthwhile.



I'm going to be interviewing Brian for an upcoming FoxShow and we'll also do a screencast along with it. And no, it won't take 12 months for a new FoxShow <g> - it will be up by mid-next week.









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Anonymous said…
VFP developers have been accepting low scalability for their web apps, like with Ruby, for years by using file-based West Wind webconnection. Anybody that has a really busy site using that technology knows the pain..
April 20, 2007 at 12:22 PM
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