Mark VanOrman wrote:
>  I'm about to embark on a large scale project. It's basically a rewrite of a
> current application that processes e-commerce transactions. (sending cc
> info to bank platforms, creating records in db, handling reporting and the
> like. Average load is about 50,000 transactions/day). The current
> application is written in PHP as a cgi script. Mod_php is installed on
> apache for speed. The main reason for the rewrite is the code clutter and
> really bad design.
> 
>  I'm supposed to write the application in JAVA, but willing to give Ruby a
> chance, because of nicer syntax and other neat features. My main concerns
> are 
> 
> 1- can Ruby handle such a mission critical applications as far as
> reliability and speed? 

well, if you trust php for "mission critical" application, then i don't 
see why you wouldn't trust ruby. i have given up php for things "mission 
critical" because the 4.x series change too much and introduce many bugs 
and/or incompatibilities between minor releases. i mean, on one release 
the default for something is on, on another it's off. the API is 
horrible, it's inconsistent and it changes a lot. it drives me crazy.

hm, bad design and php usually go along together a lot :-) the language 
itself is badly designed, the paradigm is about mixing code & content, 
it's no wonder...

> 3- From your experiance, would you think it's better to develop an
> application like this as a cgi(people would post transes to apache) or as a
> standalone server(post directly to ruby)?

there are many alternatives if you want to go faster than CGI: fastcgi, 
Apache module, standalone daemon. all can and has be done with ruby.

Regards,
dave