Two great articles written by fellow TWers:
First off is
this article describing the basics of a13g and some of the reasoning behind it, it’s written by fellow aussie Shane Harvie (currently working in the US).
Almost immediately afterwards Dennis Byrne writes this
great post about integrating a Rails AJAX front end with an a13g messaging back end.
Good stuff.
Andrew Kuklewicz just checked in a significant overhaul of ActiveMessaging he
describes the changes better himself, but here’s a quick summary:
All the changes are documented on the wiki.
All in all with the addition of the WebSphere MQ and JMS support ActiveMessaging is certainly ready for prime time. Got an old mainframe system you want to expose to the web? Crank up that CICS MQ connector, get your flat file parsers ready and you’re set to go!
Truly superb work by Andrew and Sylvain!
So, Obie let the cat out of the bag. 
Here’s the official story: Yes, we’ve been working on a messaging plugin for Rails. Yes, it works, it will be in production this or the next week. Yes, it’s pretty cool.
And, no, it’s not ready for general consumption.
That much for release early, release often, huh?
We’re calling it a13g (A-thirteen letters-g or ActiveMessaging) because names with numbers in them are soooo Web 2.0. Obie doesn’t like it but oh well, can’t please everybody.
Stay tuned for my next blog post: How to integrate Rails with CICS applications running in your trusty OS/390 box. Doesn’t get more enterprise ready than that!
(Joking aside, I can actually write a blog post about that if anyone is interested. But they would have to be damn interested as it’s not exactly a ride in the park.)
See you in Campfire.
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