Rails (and similar frameworks like Seam, Grails, etc.) work by inspecting database schemas and dynamically generating code at runtime. They implicitly assume a SQL database, which isn’t really a good fit for most publishing applications. Sure you can slice and dice documents enough to force them into tables, but it’s a lot like pounding screws into set concrete with hammers. <\/p>\n
Many publishing applications, especially generic systems like Wikis, content management systems, and blog engines, would be better served by a native XML database and XQuery; e.g. eXist instead of MySQL. What would a Rails-like system look like in this environment? What would the conventions (instead of configurations) be?
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Is XQuery even capable of supporting this? After all, it’s only SELECT. Updates aren’t finished yet. Even more importantly, a lot of details like how you find collections are unspecified and implementation specific. It’s not really possible to write any XQuery code that queries a database without using DB-specific functionality.<\/p>\n