If you have to process a large amount of external http requests bound by database access, maybe the em-resque gem we've just created could be useful for you. You can get more information in related article about it.

The idea behind it is to have a really simple library to compress your assets in the simplest way without any weird dependency (who said Java?). There are nice assets packaging systems out there but they have too many options for some cases. Sometimes, you just want to play with a pet project. I hope that Evax will help you!