Who's this then?
Alexander Malfait
Enjoying Rails since 2007
Tallest employee at CAT Solutions

Wait, didn't we
hate Java?
JVM is fast
JVM is everywhere, corporate approved
Tons of useful & widely used libraries
Runs great on Windows

Running Rails
jruby -S gem install glassfish
jruby -S glassfish -e production
config.threadsafe!
Works on other app servers (.war file)

Hiding behind Apache
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName my.awesome.app.be
RewriteEngine On
ProxyPass / http://localhost:3000/ retry=0
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3000/
ErrorDocument 503 "<b>Come back in 10 seconds</b>"
</VirtualHost>
http://blog.headius.com/2009/04/apache-jruby-rails-glassfish-easy.html

Talking to Java
Just create java objects like Ruby objects
Extend Java classes in Ruby
Require jars from Ruby without mucking
about with the JVM ClassPath

Ruby Style Java
java.lang.System.current_time_millis
x.setSomething(var) => x.something = var
button = javax.swing.JButton.new "Press me!"
button.add_action_listener do |event|
event.source.text = "You did it!"
end

Flying Saucer
Renders XHTML/CSS3 to PDF (very well!)
Written in Java
Handles any reporting problem you can
throw at it

acts_as_flying_saucer
Rails apps produce HTML
You know HTML
Report to PDF using HTML

Cocktail Reporting
class DrinksController < ApplicationController
acts_as_flying_saucer
def mojito
@ingredients = [
"4.0 cl White Rum",
"3.0 cl Fresh lime juice",
"3 sprigs of Mint",
"2 teaspoons Sugar",
"Soda Water"
]
render_pdf :send_file => { :filename => "tasty.pdf" }
end
end

Cocktail Reporting
<h1 style="color: green;">Mojito!</h1>
<ul>
<% @ingredients.each do |ingredient| %>
<li><%=h ingredient %></li>
<% end %>
</ul>
render_pdf

I want my mojito NOW!
Rendering drinks/mojito
Completed in 16ms
~62 mojitos/second

Larger documents
Rendering the holy bible
4.5MB of HTML
Resulting PDF: 1134 pages
Completed in 22500ms

Real Example

Typical Reporting
Problems
Repeating headers / footers
Paginating/nesting tables
Lots of data
Maintaining uniform reporting style
All covered by the flying saucer!

Script anything!
JFreeChart: powerful charting
Apache POI: read & write Excel files
JODConvertor: convert (almost) anything
to anything using OpenOffice.org
Swing
Hundreds more...

References
http://github.com/alexandermalfait/acts_as_flying_saucer
http://bosmeeuw.wordpress.com/
http://www.catsolutions.be/