Rails is an open source Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications. What's special about that? There are dozens of frameworks out there and most of them have been around much longer than Rails. Why should you care about yet another framework?

What would you think if I told you that you could develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you could with a typical Java framework? You can--without making any sacrifices in the quality of your application! How is this possible?

Part of the answer is in the Ruby programming language. Many things that are very simple to do in Ruby are not even possible in most other languages. Rails takes full advantage of this. The rest of the answer is in two of Rail's guiding principles: less software and convention over configuration

The easiest path is to use the LightTPD (or "lighty") web server: a production-quality web server that's very popular in the Rails community. In fact, Rails 1.0 will use the LightTPD web server by default if it's installed on the local machine.

The first time you start the application by typing script/server, a LightTPD configuration file is created in the config/lighttpd.conf file. By default, your Rails application will run in the development runtime environment. To switch to the production environment, simply update the config/lighttpd.conf file and set the RAILS_ENV environment variable as follows:

This is a [one-click, self-contained Windows installer] that contains the Ruby language itself, dozens of popular extensions and packages, a syntax-highlighting editor and execution environment, and a Windows help file that contains the full text of the book, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.

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To develop a web application using Ruby on Rails Framework, install the following software:

• Ruby
• The Rails framework
• A Web Server
• A Database System

We assume that you already have installed a Web Server and Database System on your computer. You can always use the WEBrick Web Server, which comes with Ruby. Most sites, however, use Apache or lightTPD in production.

1. First, let's check to see if you already have Ruby installed. Bring up a command prompt and and type ruby -v. If Ruby responds, and if it shows a version number at or above 1.8.2 then skip to step 3. Otherwise, we'll install a fresh Ruby.
2. Download ruby-x.y.z.tar.gz from www.ruby-lang.org
3. Untar the distribution, and enter the top-level directory.
4. Do the usual open-source build as follows