Rails (2004) is a consolidation of good ideas found in frameworks like Zope and J2EE, combined with a simple, thought out, API. Throw in Ruby, a language that is easy to use and read. In fact Dave Thomas (one of the pragmaticprogrammers, remember?) writes 'I think Rails may well be the framework to break Ruby into the mainstream'. It takes less to write an application in Rails than writing configuration XML for other systems.

My talk should act as a quick introduction to the power and simplicity of Ruby, as well as showing the Rails framework - an tool which helps hyper-productivity in web applications design. Now we have a tool which can help systemadministrators offer easy interfaces to Joe User without having to resort to CGI hacking or the overheads of a JAVA J2EE application.

I'll show how we build a web application for systemadministration using Rails and Cfruby (a library for systemadministration, with Cfengine-like features, developed by David Powers and myself). You don't have to understand Ruby to attend, as long as you like scripting.