> But... Rails 3.0 would go with Active Record as default and hence it
> seems  wise to go for the default. Plus....Active Record is more
> established with lots of reference material available, I think
> majority would opt for Active Record.
>
> I am aware that Rails 3.0 is modular and would be easy to work with
> DataMapper and other ORM's, but I would also like to know, how many
> Merbist here shares my opinion. It would be nice to go for opinion
> poll as well if required.
>
> What do core Merb Team think as well...?

As the lead maintainer of DataMapper, I'm ok with ActiveRecord being
the default in Rails, for now ;)

I think the Merb/Rails merger will be really good for DataMapper
though, as it will bring in alot of new people and help flesh out the
documentation and build up the reference material.  I think it will
also help identify the edge cases, since I believe DM is better suited
to providing an ORM for legacy DBs, and providing access to non-RDBMS
storage engines.

It's no secret that DM is less mature than AR.  We never claimed
otherwise.  AR has a 3 to 4 year head start, it is used in hundreds --
if not thousands -- of production systems and has a development
community at least 10x larger than DM.

However, I may be biased, but I do prefer DM's architecture.  I like
that you can define properties in the model, and the use of the
IdentityMap as well as Strategic Eager Loading.  I like that the
internals are storage engine agnostic (or nearly so, we still have a
couple of RDBMSisms that are being taken care of).  DM embraces most
of Merb's coding conventions, so the internals are relatively clean
and getting even cleaner, we are working on documenting the public/
semipublic/private API, and the specs are being rewritten to test the
API and not the implementation.

We are working hard to make it so that by the time Rails 3 is released
the only reason to choose AR over DM will be personal preference.  I
think it will be the same sort of situation as jQuery and Prototype.
Prototype is the default JavaScript library included with Rails, but
based on informal polls I've seen and people I've spoken with jQuery
is used by just as many developers if not more than Prototype.  Both
libraries are excellent, relatively bug free, provide roughly the same
outcome (using different approaches) and are mature enough that the
only reason to choose one over the other is personal preference.

Dan
(dkubb)
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