Talk given during QCon 2008 in San Francisco

1. merb
&
f l e x i b i l t y
p e r f o r m a n c e

2. Me

3. Matt
Aimonetti Me
irc: m a t t e t t i
http://github.com/mattetti

4. core team member
& Matt
evangelist

5. don’t work
at Engine Yard
Matt
http://engineyard.com

6. don’t work
at Engine Yard
Matt
http://engineyard.com

7. Consultant Matt
based in San Diego, CA

8. http://ma-agile.com/training

9. Blogs:
http://merbist.com
http://railsontherun.com

12. Conclusion
merb meets the Enterprise needs
✓Cost
✓Adaptability
✓Scalablility

14. “It’s also worth mentioning that
there shouldn’t be doubt in
anybody’s mind at this point that
Ruby itself is slow. It’s great that
people are hard at work on faster
implementations of the language,
but right now, it’s tough.”
Alex Payne, Twitter

15. I for one am scared of Ruby
because ... it's known to be
slow, so if you become The Next
MySpace, you'll be buying 5
times as many boxes as the .NET
guy down the hall.
Joel Spolsky

16. Rails is for the vast majority of
web applications Fast Enough... I
just happen to care much more
about free developer cycles and
am willing to trade the former for
the latter.
David Heinemeier
Hansson

17. Rails is slow

18. Ruby is slow

19. “The slowest programming
language in the world”

20. benchmarks someone?

22. raw PHP:
331 rps

23. raw PHP:
331 rps
cake PHP:
3.6 rps / 8 rps(eaccelerator)

24. raw PHP:
331 rps
cake PHP:
3.6 rps / 8 rps (eaccelerator)
code igniter:
21.5 rps / 98.2 rps (eaccelerator)

25. raw PHP:
331 rps
cake PHP:
3.6 rps / 8 rps (eaccelerator)
code igniter:
21.5 rps / 98.2 rps (eaccelerator)
Rails:
88 rps

26. Rails
is
pretty close to
the fastest PHP framework.

27. what about merb?

28. hello world benchmarks
baseline results

29. apache serving static html:
hello.html
raw PHP:
<?php echo quot;Hello worldquot;; ?>
merb router:
match(quot;/hello worldquot;)

30. Merb Router Static HTML raw php
3783 req/s 2898 req/s 1995 req/s
http://merbist.com

31. Merb 1.0 Django 1.0.1 Rails 2.2.1 Code Igniter 1.6.3
Symfony Cake PHP
$ ab test: ab -c 10 -n 5000 http://0.0.0.0/benchmark
http://merbist.com

32. Ruby might be slow at
fibonacci benchmarks
who cares?

33. Ruby is fast at
real life web benchmarks
that’s what matters!

34. Ruby for the web
is NOT slow

36. Enterprise

37. Enterprise
Enterprise needs
enterprise software

38. Enterprise
“Enterprise software is software
intended to solve an enterprise problem
(rather than a departmental problem)
and often written using
an Enterprise Software Architecture.”

39. Enterprise
enterprise problem
!=
departmental problem

40. Enterprise
an enterprise problem
covers problems from
many different departments

41. Enterprise
many different departments
means
different needs/challenges

42. Enterprise
“Enterprise software is software
intended to solve an enterprise problem
(rather than a departmental problem)
and often written using
an Enterprise Software Architecture.”

43. Enterprise
Enterprise Software Architecture

44. Enterprise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture

45. Enterprise
organization-specific software architecture

46. Enterprise
“Due to the cost
of building what is often proprietary software,
only large organizations
attempt to build such software that
models the entire business enterprise [...]”

47. Enterprise
Elite

48. Enterprise
what about the not so large companies?

49. Enterprise
“As many business enterprises
have similar departments and systems,
enterprise software is often available as
a suite of programs
that have attached development tools to
modify the common programs for the specific
enterprise.”

50. Enterprise
“complex development programming tools
that
require specialist capabilities”.

51. Enterprise
Business Software Solutions
Applications and Services

52. Enterprise
SAP system
CRM ERP
NetWeaver
ABAP
SRM

53. Enterprise
Concerns:
cost
adaptability

54. Enterprise
Concerns:
Does it scale?

55. Enterprise
scalability
loads of req/s
easily extendable
swap/extract parts

56. what about merb?
because that’s why I’m here

57. cost
open source
free as in free speech

58. cost
ruby
Great language - widely adopted - enjoyable
momentum

59. bet on
Ruby
MacRuby
Rubinius

60. bet on
Ruby
MacRuby
Rubinius

61. cost
reusable
merb slices - mountable mini applications

62. cost
reusable merb slices
Merb::Router.prepare do
slice(:blog, :path => quot;blogquot;)
slice(:wiki, :path => quot;wikiquot;)
slice(:public_calendar, :path => quot;calendarquot;)
end

63. cost
smooth transition
access your Java code directly from Merb
deploy your merb app like you deploy your java apps

64. cost
choose
model the entire business enterprise
build common tools for common use

65. adaptability
because needs differ and change

66. adaptability
merb is truly modular
http://flickr.com/photos/
testing template
ORM JS lib
framework engine

67. $ merb-gen very_flat app-name
1 file
Merb::Router.prepare do
match('/').to(:controller => 'very-flat-app', :action =>'index')
end
class VeryFlatApp < Merb::Controller
def index
quot;Hi, I am 'very flat' Merb application. I have everything in one single file
and well suited for dynamic stub pages.quot;
end
end

68. $ merb-gen app app-name
merb stack
MVC architecture
asset management
caching
view helpers
mailer
authentication
exceptions handler

69. adaptability
pick and choose
add/remove dependencies

70. adaptability
pick and choose
extend
plugins - slices - API

71. adaptability
pick and choose
extend
replace
build around merb core

72. scalability
see benchmarks
modularity
small memory footprint

73. sum up

74. merb is fast

75. merb is flexible

76. http://flickr.com/photos/ezzyponchi/283381271/ http://bonluxat.com
merb is modular

77. merb can be opinionated

78. merb recycling

79. Merb has a bright future for the
people who are not satisfied by the
fixed ways in Rails.
I think that Merb will give users
more freedom in a Ruby-ish
way of programming.
matz likes merb

80. Conclusion
merb meets the Enterprise needs
✓Cost
✓Adaptability
✓Scalability

81. questions?