Not long ago, around mid-2005, I was enchanted by the beauty of Ruby on Rails. Not much time passed until I found where the beauty came from.

My name is Gerardo Santana and I'm the author of the Ruby driver for Informix, the RDBMS that powers the largest database of employees (for a personnel management and payment system) and the largest database of students (for a student information system) in the state of Chiapas, at my work place.

Before deciding to write the Ruby driver, I tried the Perl driver first (Python was not an option since at the time it was in beta.) But after knowing and enjoying Ruby on Rails, I decided to rewrite one of our systems with it. Not having the ActiveRecord adapter for Informix, not even a native Ruby driver for Informix, drove me to give Informix not one, but two gems: Ruby/Informix and Rails/Informix.

And it has proved rewarding. Solving real problems in a fast, reliable and ejoyable way is priceless.

• Fast, because it's using the ESQL/C interface as it was intended to be, instead of arbitrary DB APIs. Let the programmer unleash the full power of Informix.
• Reliable, because it lets you write safer code that automatically and immediatly frees database resources after using them. No more resource leaks.
• Enjoyable. Thank you Matz.

In the next posts I will provide examples of effective and efficient uses of the Ruby driver as well as interesting uses of ActiveRecord with Informix.