IBM DB2 manual Ruby, IBM Ibmdb gem, Installation of Ibmdb gem

4.5 Ruby

Ruby is a dynamic, general purpose, object-oriented scripting language that has Perl-like syntax and Smalltalk-like features. The style of programming is similar to Lisp, Perl, Python, CLU, and Dylan. Ruby supports different programming paradigms such as procedural, reflection, and object-oriented.

Ruby on Rails (RoR), also known as Rails, is a Web application development framework written in Ruby. It is designed with the principles such as “don’t repeat yourself”, and “convention over configuration” in mind to facilitate faster and more efficient Web application development with reduced redundant code. RoR has very quickly become one of the popular Web application development frameworks in Web 2.0 applications.

4.5.1 IBM IBM_DB gem

IBM provides support for database connectivity to IBM data servers using Ruby and Ruby on Rails through the IBM_DB gem. The IBM_DB gem allows Ruby applications to access both Informix Data Server (IDS) and DB2 data servers, based on the Distributed Relational Database Architecture™ (DRDA®) protocol. IBM is the only vendor that provides enablement and support for Ruby on Rails. The Ruby Gem, Rails Adapter/Driver for IBM Data Servers is available for download, free of cost, at the following site:

http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyibm/

4.5.2 Installation of IBM_DB gem

We first cover the prerequisites to installing IBM_DB gem and then we discuss about the installation on Linux, UNIX, and Windows.

Prerequisites

Ensure that the following Ruby and Rails components are installed prior to installing IBM_DB gem to access IBM data servers:

￿Ruby:

You can download the latest Ruby from: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/

For Linux and UNIX, there is source code available. For Windows, a one-click installer is also available.

￿RubyGems:

RubyGems is the standard Ruby package manager. You can download RubyGems from:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126

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