Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby helps you take advantage of the full power of your database engine from within your Ruby programs and Rails applications. ActiveRecord, part of the magic that makes the Rails framework so powerful and easy to use, is the model element of Rails model/view/controller framework. Its an object-relational mapping library enabling you to interact with databases from both Ruby and Rails applications. Because ActiveRecord is configured with default assumptions that mesh perfectly with the Rails framework, Rails developers often find they hardly need think about it at all. However, if you are developing in Ruby without Rails, or are deploying against legacy databases designed without Rails in mind, or you just want to take advantage of database-specific features such as large objects and stored procedures, you need the in-depth knowledge of ActiveRecord found in this book.
