Ruby on Rails is a full stack framework that enables the creation of database driven websites and applications. Ruby on Rails is revolutionising the web industry. It enables programmers to create web applications in a better structured, highly productive environment and one that lends itself to agile practices (small iterations, great customer communication, and evolving software) and full application testing (you know your website works before you release it!).

One of the great aspects of rails is that it is open source software. This means to the developer that there is a great active community providing support, additional plug ins, and bug fixes very quickly. To the business owner it means no licence fees to pay, low setup costs and hosting is kept to a minimal as Ruby on Rails applications are usually hosted on Linux (an open source operating system).

The Ruby on Rails community is fast expanding and Rails itself is in a stage of maturity now where it is seeing widespread adoption across the board, from start-ups to large blue chip organisations and governmental departments.

One of the more well known sites on Rails is twitter, which was originally written on Ruby on Rails. Many of the top 10 facebook applications were written in Rails, and companies in the UK using rails include the BBC, Sun Microsystems, JP Morgan, CapGemini, Amazon to name a few.

Whatever you may need to do, from making a facebook application to creating a social network, to an e-commerce site, to Software as a Service, or corporate internal applications, the Ruby on Rails framework is a very solid and robust interface to build on.

Guest post from Jason Green of Dynamic50 - Boutique Web Design and Development in Ruby on Rails