ROM 0.5.0 Released
Today we're happy to announce the release of ROM version 0.5.0. It is the culmination of months of hard work from a growing team of contributors.
It's exciting to end the year with such a large and meaningful release.
How We Got Here
There were some twists and turns along the way, not the least of which was a reboot of the project with all new internals in November. The reboot was a turning point that has allowed us to accelerate development while cementing the core of ROM and surrounding libraries.
Version 0.5.0
The emphasis thus far has been on powerful mapping features and speed. This has resulted in an interface that looks lower-level than the other projects people use daily. We believe the higher-level and more convenient interfaces will emerge with more real world use.
Many of the features and much of the polishing found in this release happened as a direct result of ROM being used in production projects. In fact, one of the larger realizations over the last several months has been that ROM is not an ORM. I know. We were as surprised as you. Take some time to use it and you'll see what we mean. The Rails Tutorial outlined below is a great place to start.
There were so many things added, improved, replaced, refactored, and considered
both in the core of ROM and in libraries like rom-rails and
rom-sql that we can't cover them all here. See the changelog
section below for an overview of the changes and a link to the changelogs for
each project.
rom-rb.org
If you're reading this, it's because of the work we've done updating the website. Alongside the obvious layout and style changes we've also spent time on introductions and tutorials.
Introductions
The introductions are here to help you get accustomed to the terms and concepts used throughout ROM. You'll also find a brief article on Why ROM and a short comparision with ActiveRecord.
Tutorials
We've put together a fairly thorough tutorial for getting started with ROM and Rails and have several more planned. Even if you don't use Rails, this tutorial can help you understand how many of the ideas in ROM come together to create powerful ways of working with data.
There will be more tutorials in the coming weeks.
[rom] v0.5.0 Changelog summary:
Major milestone of putting together relation and mapping layers is done. ROM runs on a pluggable data mapping backends now. The first one is built-in and is based on a new library called transproc. More will come soon as the need arises.
Mapping is much more powerful now, support for prefixing keys, symbolizing keys, wrapping, grouping, embeddeding and coercions was added. In addition to that wrap, group and embedded can be nested which allows you to build very rich aggregate objects
Reading can only be used with defined relations now, which adheres to one of the core concepts in rom that data access should be restricted and encapsulated in the relation layer.
Adapter interface was improved and extended with extra options that can be used to build powerful adapters setup interface was improved and now accepts a simple URI string or a database.yml-complaint hash, makes it easier to use rom standalone and/or integrate with other libs and frameworks.
Relations that are not used by readers don't have to be defined now, it will be done automatically based on schema. This simplifies setup process every relation has access to all other relations (previously those were "raw" datasets from adapters). This allows you to reuse your relations inside. Well, relations.
Lots of internal improvements that should make using rom a nicer experience.
It remains very fast. Still lots of opportunities to tune it but not a big priority right now.
[rom-rails] v0.2.0 Changelog summary:
We have now generators for relations, mappers and commands!
Convenient validation and params processing extensions were added to make it easier to switch from AR to ROM in rails apps.
Support for hot-reloading in development env (works with spring!)
Support for more connection options (as a result of the general improvements in adapter interface)
[rom-demo] Updated:
- Was updated to work with the latest ROM. You can see a GitHub adapter with some advanced mapping.
[rom-sql] v0.3.1 Changelog summary:
- Support for changes to ROM options and Rails reloading.
New adapters:
As mentioned before there are a couple of small adapters in the works:
rom-yaml and rom-csv with more planned.
Onward towards ROM 1.0.0
Version 0.5.0 is a milestone on the journey to 1.0.0. There's nothing magical about a one-dot-oh but wouldn't it be nice?
For 1.0.0 there are no major changes planned. We will focus on polishing and new
features like transactions in rom-sql and an extended command
interface. There will be lots of internal small refactorings, improvements in
the spec suite to bring a more unit-based approach now that interfaces are
stabilizing, features based on feedback, and fixes for any bugs that come our
way.
You can help
Yes, you can! As with all projects "many hands make light work". You don't have to jump in and tackle core issues, of course you can, but there are many ways you can help us out:
Try it out
Take it for a test drive. Drop it in to an existing project or create a new special little place just for ROM to live. The only requirement is that you come back and tell us what you think. Like. Dislike. We want to hear it all.
Tell us how you're using ROM
You may already be building things with ROM and we'd love to hear about it. What are you making? How is it working for you? What interfaces have you created to make common work easier? This feedback can greatly improve the project for everyone.
Documentation
[dramatic pause] We all love it when it's written but who writes it? We do. When you're trying out ROM and you find something doesn't make sense -- just create an issue on the repo. You could even assign it to yourself and make it better. (Imagine the satisfaction...)
Tutorials
Follow a tutorial. Well, since there is only one at the time of this announcement perhaps we should say "follow THE tutorial". Go through it and see what you make of it. If you find yourself using ROM differently, like in another framework, create a short tutorial about it. We can even help with the writing if you need it.
Write adapters
There are a couple of simple adapters in progress. Both
rom-yaml and rom-csv are about as easy as
they get. Maybe you could write rom-json or rom-NEWDB. We can help with this
as well. Get it started and we'll all chip in.
Find your own way
We truly believe there are as many ways to help as there people. Take a look around, chat with us on Zulip and get to it.
Thanks for reading and here's to a great 2015!