If you need to do complex analytical queries on relational database data and if custom SQL is becoming far too complex and unreadable then you might want to check mondrian-olap JRuby gem.

ruby-plsql-spec gem is Oracle PL/SQL unit testing framework which uses Ruby, ruby-plsql and RSpec to create PL/SQL unit tests. New gem version includes easy command line utility as well as "rcov-like" PL/SQL code coverage reporting.

I created screencasts showing how to do Oracle PL/SQL unit testing with Ruby using ruby-plsql and RSpec.

New version of ActiveRecord Oracle enhanced adapter is released with many new features - add foreign key constraints and synonyms, access tables over database link, logging from PL/SQL procedures etc.

DataMapper Oracle adapter has been created and now DataMapper (alternative ORM to ActiveRecord) can be used with Oracle databases both on MRI 1.8.6, Ruby 1.9.1 and JRuby 1.3.

Oracle enhanced adapter 1.2.0 now can be used on MRI, JRuby and Ruby 1.9.1 which allows more flexibility for deploying Ruby on Rails on Oracle database applications. New version of Oracle enhanced adapter also passes all ActiveRecord unit tests and can be used with Rails 2.3.

Do you want to implement automatic log-in to your Rails application using Windows domain authentication? Then check out this tutorial on how to implement NTLM authentication support for Rails application.

If you are using Ruby/JRuby/Rails with Oracle database then you might be interested in the new version of ActiveRecord Oracle enhanced adapter which has new features for working with legacy databases as well as the new version of ruby-plsql gem which now supports both MRI and JRuby and provides simple API for working with PL/SQL procedures.

ActiveRecord Oracle "enhanced" adapter is original Rails Oracle adapter with several new enhancements - performance improvements for schema dump operations, fix for database session store, and also better handling of date, integer and boolean data types when using Rails with legacy Oracle databases.

Oracle just released new Oracle database client for Intel Mac and here are instructions how to setup Ruby with Oracle client on Mac.