ORS is a state agency with limited web development resources, so it uses several open source tools like Ruby on Rails, mySQL, Nginx, and Thin to build its applications rapidly and reuse code. Ruby on Rails provides a model-view-controller architecture and ActiveRecord object-relational mapper that allow for quick prototyping and development. Ruby is also a powerful language that can express business logic concisely. Using these open source solutions has given ORS flexibility in its technology choices.

1. Enterprise Open Source
Jason Dew
Budget and Control Board
Office of Research and Statistics
Health and Demographics

2. Situation
ORS is a service agency -- mostly we serve other state
agencies
very limited in our web development staff resources
fortunate enough to have management that allows us
some freedom in selecting our tools

3. The Solution
Ruby on Rails - web framework
mySQL - database server
Nginx - web server
Thin - application server
Git - source control
Capistrano - automated deployment

4. Free and Open Source
also known as F/OSS

5. Rails

6. Rapid prototyping

7. MVC architecture

8. Easy code reuse

9. Contains an ORM
ActiveRecord