Ruby on Rails is a complete web-application framework. Almost every book, sample material, and many tutorials will tell you how to set up Rails and build your project from scratch. Yet, almost every experienced developer, a dude that’s been around the corner, will tell you to do SOA and decouple the hell out of your project asap. And they would probably be right. However, I’m not here to write an awesome useful article on how to decouple a Rails project. This is a bigger job for a bigger post. I’m just ranting about my situation.
And here I go. Slicing up Rails. Now I have multiple separate Rails projects configured and running altogether, replacing what used to be a single monolithic Rails application. Good thing this project is still pretty green and manageable. One service even ended up dropping its heavy Rails heritage and turning into a Sinatra app.
It feels very nice to apply effort and make the step in the right direction. I only have one question. Is it feasible for one guy to build an SOA’ed Rails project from scratch? I am talking in terms of the amount of effort it takes to create and maintain a bunch of separately-configured wholesome isolated services, building an API for each of them, having the other ends talk to them. The overhead seems bigger than the one between your average slashdotter and an average joke. So far it looks fine, yet I’m only about 20% down the road. What could possibly go wrong?
P.S. If no comments appear – let’s assume this was a rhetorical rant. : )
In my view it’s not feasible for one person to build an SOA’ed Rails project from scratch. If you are not a workaholic or genius or smth like that. :) By the way, how’s your projects?