Ruby on Rails is the super-productive new way to develop full-featuredweb applications. With Ruby on Rails, powerful web applications thatonce took weeks or months to develop can now be produced in a matter ofdays. If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't.

If you're like a lot of web developers, you've probably consideredkicking the tires on Rails - the framework of choice for the newgeneration of Web 2.0 developers. Ruby on Rails: Up and Running takes you out for a test drive and shows you just how fastRuby on Rails can go.

This compact guide teaches you the basics of installing and using boththe Ruby scripting language and the Rails framework for the quickdevelopment of web applications. Ruby on Rails: Up andRunning covers just about everything youneed - from making a simple database-backed application toadding elaborate Ajaxian features and all the juicy bits in between.While Rails is praised for its simplicity and speed of development,there are still a few steps to master on the way. More advancedmaterial helps you map data to an imperfect table, traverse complexrelationships, and build custom finders. A section on working with Ajaxand REST shows you how to exploit the Rails service frameworks to sendemails, implement web services, and create dynamic user-centric webpages. The book also explains the essentials of logging to findperformance problems and delves into other performance-optimizingtechniques.

As new web development frameworks go, Ruby on Rails is the talk of thetown. And Ruby on Rails: Up and Running can makesure you're in on the discussion.