Announcement of HefeWeizen, an Open Source ebXML messaging system. ebXML is a framework for Business to Business electronic commerce. ebXML is an open OASIS / UN/CEFACT standard.

HefeWeizen supports ebXML Messaging Service Specification version 2.0 and ebXML Collaboration Protocol Agreement and Profile Specification version 2.0.

In Rolling with Ruby on Rails, I barely scratched the surface of what you can do with Ruby on Rails. I didn't talk about data validation or database transactions, and I did not mention callbacks, unit testing, or caching. There was hardly a mention of the many helpers that Rails includes to make your life easier. I can't really do justice to all of these topics in the space of this article, but I will go into details on some of them and present a brief overview of the rest, with links to more detailed information.

There are two pieces of software you’ll need in order to use Rails on Windows XP: the Ruby programming language with RubyGems installation package, Rails 1.0 (1.1 was recently released; this articles addresses 1.0 only), and the Rails Oracle database library. To download and install Ruby with the Gems package installer, do the following.

1. Go to http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/.
2. Download the “One-Click Ruby Installer”.
3. Follow the installation instructions.

When I wrote Part 1, the current version of Rails was 0.9.3. At the time of this writing, Rails is up to version 0.10.0 and has some useful new features. I will use Rails 0.10.0 for this article. If you installed Rails after February 24, 2005, you already have 0.10.0 installed.

Figure 1 shows how to see what RubyGems you have installed (and their version numbers). As with Part 1, I am working on a Windows system, so you will need to translate if you use a different platform.

My designer brain likes an overview of how everything fits together; if I can't visualize it all dovetailing like floorboards or puzzle pieces, I have a hard as hell time coming up with a solid design for my programs. (And if I don't do a design/architecture phase before coding, I feel the need to self-flagellate with printed and bound copies of PHPNuke. Oh, you laugh now, but you should try it sometime.)