I haven’t heard much about SQL until I started reading about the next chapter of our bootcamp. I feel a little ignorant by saying this, but I’ve never stopped to think about the importance of databases in the web. I guess I’ve always seen it as a black box.
Learning how to manipulate SQL is it was eye opening. I couldn’t believe the amount of information once can get with such a simple language.
The transition from Ruby to SQL wasn’t easy though, getting used to this new way of giving orders to the machine felt hard, even though the syntax was simple it didn’t feel smooth like Ruby did. I felt like a fish out of water.
I guess it never really clicked with me until I started coding ActiveRecord and Sinatra.
ActiveRecord is an ORM (Object Relationship Mapping), meaning it let’s you access a relational database while using OOP language! Yes! Now it makes sense. We can include databases through Ruby, now we can “save” our information somewhere and access it later.
Thanks to Sinatra, we can put all of our knowledge together; Sinatra is a DSL (Domain Specific Language) that’s implemented in Ruby utilized for writing web apps. Thanks to this, we can turn our Ruby apps into Web Apps.