Alternate client libraries have already been created for JavaScript and Adobe Flex. Therefore,
Active Resource and REST open up a new avenue for the integration of disparate or legacy systems
with Rails or Active Record applications.
It should be noted though that, even within a RESTful system, it??™s likely that code will, at
some point, need to access data stored within a database. So, while Active Resource (and web
services as a whole) have been gaining a lot of traction as of late, they are not so much meant
to replace libraries such as Active Record as to complement them (and maybe help to abstract
the complexities of data stores a bit more).
CHAPTER 8 ?– ACTIVE RECORD AND THE REAL WORLD 194
Active Record on Its Own
As we??™ve attempted to communicate throughout this book, Active Record is entirely functional
outside of the Ruby on Rails framework for which it was created. As such, other frameworks
have also started to use Active Record as their database ORM layer. Two such examples are
Camping and Merb:
??? Camping, a microframework, describes itself as a ???little white blood cell in the vein of
Rails??? and was written and is maintained by ???_why the lucky stiff???.
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