1 Ruby is an open source programming language that was released in 1995. th 2 Ruby is ranked 10 in the TIOBE Programming Community index . Ruby 3 on Rails is an open source web framework that was released in 2004. Ruby on Rails is being widely adopted because of its simplicity, 4 maintainability and development speed. Computerworld lists Ruby on Rails as the one of the top 5 technologies for 2007. Motivation for this Book Ruby is often compared with PHP, which is the most commonly used scripting language, and with Java, which is the most commonly used programming language. In the trends graph of TIOBE index you might notice that since the middle of 2006 Ruby shows an increase in usage 5 while PHP and Java show a decrease in usage. OReilly Radar has noted the trend towards an increased usage of Ruby on Rails. Statistics aside, Ruby on Rails has some advantages over PHP, which are discussed below. 1. Ruby on Rails is more object-oriented than PHP, thus providing all the inherent advantages of an object-oriented language such as simplicity, modularity, modifiability, extensibility, maintainability and re-usability. 2. Ruby on Rails is web framework whereas PHP is only a scripting language.