Slides from my talk at RubyConf India 2012. This is a case in point for a highly productive & scalable enterprise application development platform with JRuby on Rails. When we started to architect an enterprise micro-blogging solution as part of the internal collaboration platform for a large customer (henceforth referred by dummy name 'CustCollab'), the next immediate question was “Which web application development framework to use?”. Simplicity, productivity, ability to deliver high quality of service (QoS), especially performance & scalability, & alignment with CustCollab's technology stack were our top criteria for framework selection. After considerable research on state-of-the-art, we zeroed in on 2 frameworks – 1) “Ruby on Rails” (RoR) for its super simplicity & productivity & 2) “Java Enterprise Edition” (JEE) for its obvious “enterprise” class, high QoS & greater alignment with CustCollab's technology stack. But we just couldn't rule out either one, since each framework had been proven to deliver qualities not so proven in the other framework. Naturally, we started dreaming of a framework which can deliver best of both worlds! And in reality, there lived such a framework – 'JRuby on Rails'! In this talk I will focus more on our experience of how JRuby, & hence JRoR, has done a fantastic job of delivering best of RoR & JEE worlds to an enterprise application w.r.t multiple 'quality of service' attributes like scalability (parallel processing, Garbage Collection, compilation, caching, advanced database connection pooling etc.), productivity, extensibility, security (especially CSRF), session management, reusability, total cost of ownership (alignment with existing/preferred technology stack) etc. With the help of the real world 'CustCollab Micro-blogging' case in point, this presentation demonstrates how the distant, isolated worlds of RoR & JEE can synergize with the help of the JRuby bridge to result in a highly productive & scalable enterprise application development platform. I hope it encourages others to adapt JRuby, & hence Ruby, in the enterprise. After all, as promised by the JRuby dev. team, the JRuby improvisation is well capable of delivering the best of both Java & Ruby worlds, & hence deserves greater attention in the enterprise world!

1. 1

2. Once upon a time…
powerful Java on their beautiful Ruby
way to win
the plot to unfold Enterprize battles to be won
when Java, Ruby tried to win battles on their own…
there were happy times… …& some down times…
…….
then comes the time… Java falls in love with Ruby…
(a little rhyming love song…I promise)
now wait for the climax…
No background music Fast & dramatic No popcorn break 2

3. The script writer & confessions…
x I’m neither too deep into Ruby nor have I run too far onto Rails
so far
But I love its Simplicity
 I think & code in usual Java & JEE
And I love its Class
 I architect & code solutions at TCS
 Thrilled to talk about JRuby when one
of it’s creators & a JRuby hero is here!
(Unbelievable!)
x I tried, but couldn’t further shorten title of this story…
3

4. The plot
Micro-blogging @CustCollab
API
Search Public/private/
corporate/auto
Profiles follow communities
Smart
Follow, unfollow,
phones Micro-blogging
invites etc.
Pretty std notifications
deply arch with Usage
DMZ expected to Timelines,
over a period threads, hashtags
200,000+
total users & Notifications
from other apps
4

5. The actors supporting Java & Ruby
/*
* @author #jruby.org
*/
public class JRuby implements Ruby {
/*
* This implementation of Ruby programming
* language brings class to Ruby/Rails
* & simplicity to Java/JEE.
*/
…
} 5

6. “Ruby on Rails® is an open-source web framework that's
optimized for programmer's happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.” - rubyonrails.org
6
“On a rail track” by Ahmad Kavousian (flickr)

7. Is it
the
Silver
Bullet?
7
Silver bullet (flickr)

8. Large Crowd (flickr)
8

9. The battles to be won
 Performance & Scalability
 Productivity
 Extensibility
 Security
 Platform Maturity & Skills
(Total Cost of Ownership)
9

10. Technology stack under consideration
 JEE 5 on standard JEE container
 Ruby 1.8.7 (MRI) + Rails 2.3.5 on
standard RoR container
 JRuby 1.5.0 (Ruby 1.8.7) + Rails 2.3.5 on
standard JEE container
10

11. Performance & Scalability
11

12. Mumbai at sleep hours… Mumbai at peak hours…
“Architect to Scale”
Pune way back in my college days… Pune on my way to RubyConfIndia 2012
12

13. “Languages don’t scale, architectures do”
- (someone wise)
13
Twitter bird (flickr)

14. Perf. &
Scale
Threading & Parallel Processing
[Concurrency is a Myth in Ruby by Ilya Grigorik]
JRuby
Thanks to Ilya Grigorik, Evan Phoenix (Ruby, Concurrency, and You) & Sasada Koichi (YARV)
for demystifying the concurrency & parallelism in Ruby implementations… 14

15. Perf. &
Scale
Memory Management
JRuby:
Ruby 1.8 (MRI): More init mem. util (-), JVM GC
Stop the world, mark & sweep optimized to death over the
years. E.g.Min. GC pauses using
Ruby 1.9.3 (YARV): Lazy sweep multi- cores, or….or….(++)
garbage truck (flickr) 15

16. Perf. &
Scale
Code Execution Mechanism
Ruby 1.8
Ruby 1.9 JRuby
- Charles Nutter, Learning More About JRuby 16

17. The battlefield………
17

18. Perf. &
Scale
Caching
Data store ~ bottleneck
Caching = Don’t hit bottleneck. Closer is faster.
JRoR
JEE RoR
@CustCollab
 Session, application scope:  Memcached:  Simple, fast JEE
• No i/o, protocol for in-memory +1 breakpoint, cache
• Auto expiry +1 component  Options++
• App. server’s high availability  Cache’s HA to
(HA) = cache’s HA be architected
Scale out options: Ehcache, …  Page, view,
Page, view, fragment scope etc. fragment
scope etc.
18

19. Perf. &
Scale
Advanced Database Connection Pooling
require ‘reliable/db/pooling’
handle (spikes + heavy load + no load + failures)
JEE containers RoR containers JRoR
 JDBC Pool + warm-up + Pool + ?  JRuby AR-JDBC
shrink + health ping + bridge enables
recover leaked connections scalable + reliable db
+ monitor utilization = connection pool
Scalable + Reliable
19

20. Perf. &
Scale
Asynchronous Messaging
Can’t remove bottlenecks?
Decouple them…
JRoR
JEE RoR
@CustCollab
JMS: Good ones like ‘delayed job’  JMS planned
Evolving. As high QoS as as message
• Stood the test of
JVM impls? Twitter FUD. queue
time…& money in
large financial No open std specs as such?
institutions! Product lock-in?
• High Quality of
Service (QoS)
20

21. Perf. &
Scale
JRuby+Java 7+new compiler: Future worth a mention
+
New Compiler: “Give the JVM better byte code.” Wow!
+
“There will always be cases where we win or where we lose. Java 7's features
have made the win cases more frequent and more impressive. In general
if we are slower we consider it a bug and would like bug reports.”
[Sources: Charles Nutter, Learning More About JRuby & red/black tree benchmark ]
21

22. The battlefield………
22

23. Yeah, yeah.. but what about Productivity?
23

24. Productivity
Write Less, Do More
Every manager’s dream! Every programmer’s happiness!
Uhh? “programmer’s happiness”? = RoR 
JEE RoR JRoR @CustCollab
 You being smart isn’t  Quick, feature rich
enough …need smarter IDE Genetically coded releases
for the Next Gen
 Configuration is the web...  Happy happy we
Convention (seen web.xml shall be! When we
of a large app?) learn our JRuby!
AJAX
24

25. Extensibility
25

26. Extensibility +
Productivity
Multiple Response Formats
I want it NOW!
consumers = browsers + computers + smart phones +…aliens?
JEE RoR JRoR @CustCollab
 Not readily Ready to eat XML,  Agile, XML based micro-
cooked into the JSON, RSS, ATOM blogging API. Integrated
framework w/ apps, BB, iOS devices
<%= @messages.to_xml(:root => "messages") %>
26

27. The battlefield……… 27

28. Security
28

29. Security +
Productivity
SAML Single Sign-On
Don’t re-invent. Reuse.
JEE RoR JRoR @CustCollab
 Tested, ready to  Develop it or wait till  Reused the ready to
use Java someone else does. Then use! That was fast!
OpenSAML customize it, test it.
custom
components in
CustCollab
29

30. Security +
Optimization
Session Management
Key to quality of service for good guys. Master key for bad guys.
Secure to death.
JEE RoR JRoR @CustCollab
 In-memory w/o  Cookie: 4 KB limit, not  Secure, high quality
i/o, w/ auto- b/w friendly, of service session
invalidation vulnerable in principle mgmt. = JEE
 Inherits app. server’s  AR: db queries + session store
high availability (HA) cleanup daemon =
architecture (perf. + maint.)++  Vary session
timeout based on
 Session mgmt.  Memcached: +1 intranet or internet
API: Set timeout breakpoint + need to using JEE session
based on IP range design HA + cleanup mgmt. APIs
w/o persistent cookie
30

31. Security +
Productivity
Protection Against Security Threats
Built-in is better.
JEE RoR JRoR @CustCollab
 Protection against XSS,  XSS, SQL injection,  Micro-blogging
SQL injection etc. prepared stmts, use case most
 CSRF protection? [JSF 2.2 CSRF… vulnerable to XSS,
(WIP): strong, Servlet  Easy to use plug-ins, SQL injection,
spec 3.1 (WIP?): yes?] gems for others. E.g. CSRF. RoR
ReCAPTCHA simplifies
protection.
“protect_from_forgery” + “verify :method =>…”
31

32. The battlefield………
32

33. All this is fine, but have you thought
about my Total Cost of Ownership?
33

34. Total Cost of Ownership
Alignment with Preferred Tech. Stack
= low total cost of ownership (TCO). Cost does matter.
JEE JRoR on JEE runtime
RoR @JavaJEEShop
@JavaJEEShop @JavaJEEShop
 Mature. Large  Simplicity =  JEE resources ramped up
footprint in Unconventionally on RoR…real quick!
enterprise world short learning  Leveraged @CustCollab:
& @CustCollab. curve for Apache mod_jk, Tomcat,
Leverage dev, programmers build & deploy (war),
ops skills,  Infra, ops, tools, jVisualvm, Servlet filters,
infra, tools = evolving,…? = High logging & analysis etc.
Low TCO TCO  Low TCO
34

35. & the battles are over…
so, who won the enter prize ?
35

36. 36

37. @
37

38. Hey, enough of dialogues!
We want some action!
38

39. Seeing is Believing. Can it walk the talk?
 JRuby 1.5 (Ruby 1.8.7), Rails 2.3.5, deployed as a WAR file
on Tomcat 6 with PostgreSQL 8.4 database.
 Target load (~50% of prod. estimate): 1500
concurrent/active users in load test environment
 Response time target for transaction: 90th percentile
should be < 2 to 3 seconds.
 Peak load steady state of 30 minutes.
39

40.  2 application servers: Each w/ RHEL, virtualized, Intel®
Xeon® , 2 vCPUs, 3 GB RAM, 2 GB JVM heap size.
 Test data volume: 270,000+ micro-blogging channels,
480,000+ micro-blogs.
 JRuby min and max runtimes = 1.
 Thread-safe code + “config.threadsafe!” in Rails.
Warm-up database connection pool to around 150.
On your mark…..get set…..
40

41. Rails is Happiness…
41
running…tracks(flickr)

42. & the result is…
 90th percentile of resp. time < 1.2 sec (!!), 100% passing
Throughput achieved:
o ~127,800 primary requests in steady state (30 min) -
(excludes secondary req like images, css, js)
o ~ 71 primary requests/sec in steady state
CPU utilizations
o Each application server <= 60%
o Database server <= 20%
 RAM usage before test ~ RAM usage during & after test
 JVM heap space utilization ~ 85% in steady state (peak)
42

43. Quick facts…
Live in production.
Being used via web browser as well as from
other apps & smart phones via micro-blogging
API.
 Personal channels: 200,000+
Communities (active than personal): 5000+
Micro-blogs till Feb 2012: 224,000+
43

44. Now enter the climax…
44

45. Hmmm…JRuby looks cool, isn’t it…
So, do you want to build fast & scalable applications?
Silver
Bullet
=
45
Silver bullet (flickr)

46. Oops…
there
is
NO
silver
bullet
46

47. buildFastScalableApp() {
try {
do {
(estimate + architect + design + program).to_scale;
assert_doesnt_scale? : don’t throw new hw($$$)  ;
self.be_patient();
everything.tune();
} while (!scale && !tunedTheHellOutOfEverything);
}//end try
finally {
if !scale? {
throw new hw($$$) || throw new (arch && design) ||
throw new (technology) || self.resign();
}//end nightmare
else {
beer.overflow(); RubyConfIndia.talk()?;
}//start celebrations
}//end finally
}//end job 47

48. && while (that’s true)…
{
Classy runtimes like JVM ability to
scale …rest is left up to the developer’s
abilities & ENV[“constraints”]…
}
48

49. &&
{
Simple languages like Ruby &
Convention based frameworks like Rails
productivity (more time to work on
scalability :)...rest is left up to the
developer’s abilities &
ENV[“constraints”]…
}
49

50. &&
{
Classy, Simple, Convention based
marriages like JRuby on Rails ability
to scale && productivity …rest is left
up to you to arrange such a marriage
that’s fast & will last in your
ENV[“constraints”]…
}
50

51. finally {
for (ENV[“CustCollab”]) {
that.marriage = jruby + rails;
}
}//end talk…almost
51

52. Done? Where’s the little rhyming love
song that was promised?
52

53. ‘Java + Ruby’ works just well…
Best of both is glued by the JRuby gel…
Its fast… & will scale…
Thanks JRuby, your promise didn’t fail!
- Darshan 
53

54. A note of thanks to the backstage
o My colleague Yashasree Barve for letting me know abt
RubyConfIndia CFP.
o RubyConfIndia for this opportunity!
o Manasee, my worried wife, for being cool with JRuby,
Rails, MS ppt & me over all the weekends those followed
my talk’s selection (she’s worried if I would ever finish
preparing these slides & present them well…)
54

55. Artwork credits
oThe creative & open minds on flickr:
o Mr. Ahmad Kavousian for officially permitting me to use
his beautiful art work - /photos/kavous/2473202527/
o Silver bullet - /photos/eschipul/4160817135/
o People - /photos/kheelcenter/5279081507/
o Twitter bird - /photos/travelinlibrarian/4329755033/
o Garbage truck - /photos/jeffyoungstrom/3602384021/
o Rain drops - /photos/photographygal123/4959951870/
o Running along train tracks -
/photos/seandreilinger/3167848378/
55

56. …& they lived happily ever after…
56
“On a rail track” by Ahmad Kavousian (flickr)

57. twitter.com/#!/dkarandikar
in.linkedin.com/in/darshankarandikar
57