Hi, I've implemented a few big RoR apps. I do have some good experience building large systems in many different languages and platforms but I don't consider myself a RoR guru, so I'd like you experts comment on my thoughts.
I'd like to divide a large system (app) into several functional, high- level sub-systems. These are higher level than rails Models, and provide APIs that implement business logic around functional groups. Examples of these are billing manager, security manager (accounts, privileges, roles, etc), inventory manager, manufacturing manager, and such (of course, these are just examples, but you get the point). These high-level sub-systems may be implemented as servers (think SOAP / REST / XML-RPC / ...), or just plain Ruby classes. Some of these sub-systems implement integrations with other systems, for example, a credit card gateway, an accounting system, Fedex, you name it. Some of the sub-systems may be just proxies to a system implemented on some other technology. The user interface (views) would not have access to any of the Models. They just present and / or grab data that is prepared for them / pushed back to the controllers as local variables / arrays / hash tables that don't reflect an actual Model. The controllers do not have access to Models either. Instead, they call methods from the high-level functional sub-system APIs. The Models implement lower-level business logic related to how to the information is stored and retrieved from the database, the pertinent validations, associations, etc. but do not implement high-level business logic such as "how do I bill Joe for a specific event that results in the combination of many other parameters and variables that at the end come from diverse fields on many different tables on the underlying database structure". The high-level sub-systems all share the same database and therefore same data model and only communicate with each other via their APIs, and can access all Models directly. In other words, this would work more or less as a new layer in between the MVC pattern: view <-> controller <-> high-level sub-system <-> models <-> database The idea is to build the app in a more robust / less coupled way where I can exchange parts of the app by different technologies and other applications in the future without having to recode a bunch of things. For example, the security subsystem could one day be replaced by an AAA server and then the subsystem would be re-implemented to call the AAA server (to replace its own original implementation), however the rest of the app would continue to use the same API calls to the security subsystem and so the change is isolated from the rest of the app. The problem with this is, I'd loose many of the RoR goodness, such as form helpers, easy models validation thrown back to the interface, etc. Am I missing some Ruby language construct or RoR framework construct that would enable me to implement this kind of design on an easier manner? Should I instead be thinking of many RoR applications somehow talking to each other? I really like RoR but I'm starting to find myself on a tough situation dealing with evolving mid-to-large systems (think 50+ database tables and 8+ sub-systems). I need to come up with a pattern that would force me to implement and design code that works and is maintainable on a long-term vision, however I'm not sure if this is because I don't know the 100% of what the language and framework has to offer, or if I am just using it the wrong way (or both? :-). Comments? Thanks, Seb --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
