BASIC, Ruby, DATA and Scotland On Rails

This weekend reading more of Hal Fulton's The Ruby Way, there was a blast from the past in the form of '10.1.25 Reading Data Embedded in a Program' and a reminder of all those DATA statements typed in from magazines.

Ruby not only supports the industry database and SQL standards, but other approaches such as embedded data and KirbyBase. Fulton's book is designed for 'random access' and yet I'm reading it through. There are jewels in the texts on Ruby. Sentences that while fairly obvious still serve to catch my breathe '... They differ in the amount of context they copy. ...'

10.4.7 Object-Relational Mappers discusses ActiveRecord and Og (object graph). Apparently Og can generate a database schema from Ruby class definitions (rather than vice-versa). This is a useful and powerful ORM 'especially if you design your database after your objects.' p. 384.
OK ....

With all this reading on databases whatever happened to the Associative Data Model? Still alive and very well I believe, yet more Sentences to figure out.

In order to try and make some headway, next month I'm heading for Edinburgh and the Scotland On Rails conference.

I can't attend the full event, but plan to make sure the trip is well worthwhile. While I hope all the speakers stay in fine fettle, there is a speaker for Saturday whom I pray stays in finest lustre - a presentation on DSLs! Just one highlight of what should be a really cool experience. [Stay well Joe!]