Ruby Extensions

The author reviewed Maik Schmidt´s enterprise integration with Ruby as a means of exploring dynamic languages´ applicability to middleware integration projects. Using languages such as Ruby for these projects is straight forward when developers can create pure dynamic language applications that access preexisting services, even though such services are typically implemented in middleware languages such as Java, C++, or C. This approach works reasonably well because the dynamic language applications typically reside in separate address spaces from the services they use, accessing the services only through avenues that guarantee separation, including database drivers and network connections. Are dynamic languages like Ruby useful in middleware integration projects that require you to directly couple the dynamic code to legacy code? The author explores what it takes to cleanly integrate Ruby into an existing C++ middleware system