I’ll be talking at Austin on Rails this coming Tuesday on migrating an application from Merb to Rails 3. We’ll also be covering general Rails 3 info as well.

Here’s all the details.

The first, was ad hoc background processing solutions based on built in Rails tools or simple gems. These strategies tends to be good for background processing that need to run on a fixed schedule. These strategies not persistent and are memory intensive.

The second category I talked about was simple queues. There are several gems and plugins that fit this category. The jobs are primarily persisted in the database. These solutions are relatively simple to set up, typically persist to a database table or an external queue. These are great for user generated jobs that need to run asynchronously from the typical request/response cycle. I covered some of the more popular options: BackgrounDRb, Background Job, Delayed Job, Working/Starling. We have had success with Background Job and Delayed Job where I work, but the other offer unique advantages and are worth investigation. Workling not a complete background solution by itself, but an interface to background job creation and management. In addition to Workling, you also need a runner to handle the actual running/queuing of the jobs. Spawn and Starling are popular options here. Workling allows you to switch out the underlying system that manages the queue as your needs change.

The final section of the talk focused on more advanced queues. These are all external queues completely separate from your Rails application. I mentioned Amazon SQS, RabbitMQ, Kestrel as good options to explore if you are looking for high traffic background processing.

Focus on the task before you – As you approach a hill, it is easy to get overwhelmed if you focus on the size of the entire hill. Only think about the 10 feet directly in front of you. Understand how the 10 feet fits into the larger picture, but only concentrate on the 10 feet directly in front of you.

Learn from your mistakes – When you fall, and you inevitably will, take a moment to analyze what went wrong. Either you picked a bad line, you were leaning the wrong way, whatever. Figure it out, so you don’t make that mistake again. Our shortcomings and failures offer far better opportunities for growth than our successes.

Don’t focus on the obstacles – A strange thing happens when you are riding down a trail and you focus on the big rock ahead. Your bike will veer right towards the rock. Your body instinctively will go towards whatever your eyes are fixated on. Focus on the path around the obstacle, not the obstacle itself.

Stop every so often and take in the view