Marco Campelo wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I'm starting to play with Ruby. So far I've installed cygwin+ruby,
> ruby development tool (eclipse plugin) and I'm reading the Programming
> Ruby (http://www.rubycentral.com/book/intro.html).

Welcome!

Have you checked out

   www.rubygarden.com
   www.ruby-lang.org
   www.ruby-doc.org
> 
> It was a nice start and I already found some nice stuff in the design
> of the language.
> 
> My background is system integration using EJB, Messaging Service,
> Transaction Monitor, etc.
> 
> I was wondering if Ruby already has something similar to the
> Enterprise services provided by J2EE. Because from the material I
> read, it seems to be a good language to write scripts (OK, I know that
> it is not only a script language) and Web programming (Ruby on Rails).
> 
> What about Enterprise solutions? Is there any support? Would you take this risk?

Please don't take this as a personal knock, but the phrase "enterprise 
solutions" has a nebulous buzzword feel.  I couldn't begin to answer 
your question because I have no idea what an "enterprise solution" is.

What is it you want to do?

Ruby has assorted tools and libraries to do essentially anything Java 
offers. There is no direct equivalent to EJB ans J2EE that I can think 
of, but I believe this is largely because those APIs and technologies 
are more of a solution in search of a buyer than specific responses to 
practical problems.  The Ruby world has very little marketecture.

You are more likely to find counterparts to Spring, Hibernate, Ant, 
Maven, Hivemind, and other Java tools and frameworks that (I gather) are 
becoming more the norm for server-side development than traditional 
EJB/J2EE.

> 
> What is Ruby really good for?

Oh, what a question!  Stick around.

James

-- 

http://www.ruby-doc.org
http://www.rubyxml.com
http://catapult.rubyforge.com
http://orbjson.rubyforge.com
http://ooo4r.rubyforge.com
http://www.jamesbritt.com