Pro ActiveRecord for Ruby picks up with ActiveRecord where most books on
Ruby and the Rails framework leave off. Readers begin by learning about
all the built-in assumptions that make it so wondrously easy to create
freshly-built Rails applications from scratch. Next, readers learn how
to adapt ActiveRecord to work with databases--and this includes just
about all preexisting databases--that were designed without those
assumptions in mind. Readers go on to learn how to tie ActiveRecord in
with database-specific features such as stored procedures and large
objects, how to migrate legacy database designs to work better with
ActiveRecord, and how to extend ActiveRecord to provide new and
innovative database functionality to their applications. Readers who
absorb the knowledge given in this book will have a significant
competitive advantage over those with only a superficial knowledge of
the topic.