MRuby is progressing quite rapidly, it is now possible to implement a real REPL, see github. So, it is time to continue my efforts to integrate MRuby into ArangoDB. ArangoDB currently uses JavaScript to implement transactions and enrich the database with small Actionlets, i. e. functions that take a HTTP request and produce a HTTP response. Additionally, there is a shell, which allows you to administrate the server.

I want to be able to also use MRuby for these jobs. These easiest part is the interactive shell. It requires the following components:

Frank has given a short lightning talk on using mruby in ArangoDB (at this time still called AvocadoDB) at the Cologne Ruby user group.

In my last post I investigated the possibility of using mruby as embedded language for AvocadoDB. As the first results look quite promising I decided to write a small interactive mruby shell. There is no better way to explore a new toy than to play with it.(Un)fortunately “irb” from Ruby is written in Ruby itself, so one cannot just use it for mruby. So, instead I had to write a small C++ program using “readline” and the compile/execute functions from mruby. In order to implement a Read-Eval-Print-Loop, well, one needs the print. That in itself is more complicated than expected, see the ..

Introduction

One of the design goals of AvocadoDB is:

Use AvocadoDB as an application server and fuse your application and database together for maximal throughput

In order to act as application server, AvocadoDB has a build in language, currently JavaScript. As mruby became publically available a few hours ago, I started to see if can be viable alternative. This blog post summarizes my finding.

Status Quo

AvocadoDB acts as HTTP server. Each request is parsed, routed, and passed to a small piece of..