Recently I got an opportunity to work on a rails application to implement an enterprise solution using JRuby + BIRT reporting + Torquebox and Trinidad. All an all a great learning experience in integrating all these latest technologies to build an enterprise and reporting solution. We are still improving performance for BIRT reporting. Torquebox provides lots of flexibility and high performance in deployments. JRuby is a year older now and came up with various bug fixes so it again helps. We used Trinidad too that became our default application server to use with JRuby.
This kind of solution is ideal for the Rails app containing blend of Java and Ruby as architectural stack that heavily wants to reuse, consume stable reporting platform such as BIRT (offers rich variety of reports to an application). Rails stack lacks heavy reporting and readily available solution that delivers rich set of features in all the available formats. Thus BIRT is a good fit for solution that wants to implement reporting in Rails app with the help of Java ecosystem. BIRT offers charting engine too along with features for Lists, Crosstabs, Compound reports etc. Easy integration, rich documentation, lots of active forums for help adds good points in favor of BIRT and thus we tried it in our application.
