Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails

Business intelligence and real-time reporting mechanisms play a major role in any of today's forward-looking business plans. With many of these solutions being moved to the Web, the popular Rails framework and its underlying Ruby language are playing a major role alongside web services in building the reporting solutions of tomorrow. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to this popular framework. It shows you how the Ruby language and Rails framework can create truly compelling reporting services by plugging into popular third-party applications and services such as Google AdWords, UPS.com, iTunes, and SalesForce.com.


David Berube is a Ruby developer, trainer, author, and speaker. He's used both Ruby and Ruby on Rails for several years, starting in 2003 when he became a Ruby advocate after he wrote about the language for Dr Dobb's Journal. Prior to this, he worked professionally with PHP, Perl, C++, and Visual Basic. His professional accomplishments include creating the Ruby on Rails engine for CoolRuby.com, a site that tracks the latest Ruby developments, and working with ThoughtBot.com on the Rails engine that powers Sermo America's Top Doctor contest. Additionally, he has worked on several other Ruby projects, including the engine powering CyberKnowHow's BirdFluBreakingNews search engine, and he also created the Slueshi text adventure game system, a multiplayer text game engine written in Ruby. David's journalism has been in print in over 65 countries, in magazines such as Linux Magazine, Dr Dobb's Journal, and PHP International Magazine. He's also taught college courses and spoken publicly on topics such as 'MySQL and You' and 'Making Money with Open Source Software.' He lives in New Hampshire and his hobbies include basketball, yo-yos, and sleep.