Free Mind Systems

This is the first post in a series to help spread the words erlang and Boss.

In the last 4 months I have been learning Erlang and I could start working with a web framework called Chicago Boss, Its simplicity and efficiency made me fall in love at first sight.

First I need to say that to develop simple web apps in Chicago Boss it is not necessary to know much about Erlang (just as ruby for rails). Chicago Boss was largely inspired by Rails,  so, many concepts will sound familiar if you come from Rails (MVC), the main features Chicago Boss provide are:

• Database abstraction layer, currently Tokyo Tyrant, Mnesia, MySQL and PostfreSQL supported
• Models (specially compiled parameterized modules that follow the “active record” pattern)
• Views (erlydtl)
• Controllers
• Sessions, currently ets and Mnesia adapters
• Flash
• Mail
• Tests

I have written simple applications with response times of 10-20 milliseconds without optimization. One of the things I like about Erlang and Boss is no magic, you never lose control of your application.

The key developer of Chicago Boss is Evan Miller, also key developer of the template engine erlydtl and other interesting projects, I had the opportunity of contribute recently with two core modules (Sessions and Flash), an excellent way to learn erlang.

Enough talk, if you need taste an example app, take an hour and follow this excelent tutorial (a bit outdated) .

I’m preparing a tutorial with a full application example, so, stay tunned.