Step 8 - Answer the question

a. What is git? Why it is useful?
According to Git site (n.d), Git is a free and open source, distributed version control system to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Every Git clone is a full-fledge repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server. Especially. (Git, n.d)

As Awebb (2009) stated that, Git is very useful because it shows significant benefits in development process such as
- It develops software collaboratively better while minimizing the influence of code conflicts
- Easy to track
- Branching and merging are fast and easy to do (Git, n.d)
- It is easy to turn any directory tree into a Git repository

References
Awebb (2009). Presentation on managing Drupal projects with Git and GitHub. Retrieved from http://groups.drupal.org/node/27834
Git (n.d). Retrieved from http://git-scm.com/

b. Describe how Sinatra relates to Ruby on Rails
According to wikipedia (2010), Sinatra is a free and open source web application framework and Domain Specific Language (DSL) for quickly creating web-applications in Ruby.It is an alternative to other Ruby web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails.

Unlike Ruby on Rails, Sinatra does not follow a Model-View-Control (MVC) to create websites. Instead, Sinatra focuses on “quickly creating web-application in Ruby with minimal effort”. (wikipedia, 2010).

As Ron (2007) stated that Rails requires a separates routes file to define how the web application response to request, while Sinatra will automatically add the route, and simply start responding to request just by declaring a new “get” or “post” action

Reference

Ron, E. (2007). Sinatra, a Ruby web framework, and Why it Matters. Retrieved from http://deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com/2007/10/sinatra-ruby-web-framework-and-why-it.html
Wikipedia (2010). Sinatra (Software). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra_%28software%29#cite_note-0

c. What is heroku? What is a Heroku “Dyno”? Describe how Heroku makes deployment and scaling of Ruby web applications easy.

According to Heroku site, “Heroku is a cloud application platform for Ruby – a new way of building and deploying web apps”. Deploy any ruby app instantly with a simple and familiar git push. It has many benefits from taking advanced features like HTTP caching, memcached, rack, middleware, and instant scaling built into every app. Never think about hosting or server (Heroku, n.d).

Also flowing to Heroku site, Heroku “Dyno” is roughlt equivalent to an individual Mongrel, Thin, or FastCGI backend in traditional Ruby deployment environments.

Heroku can deploy and scale easily on Ruby because some features below (Heroku, n.d):
- Multi-Tenant: Heroku is a multi-tenant platform and hosting environment
- Fully Managed: Heroku can control all the infrastructure and software layers
- Curation: actively curate each layer
- Everything you need: provide everything needed to run a modern, high-performance, scalable web app.

References

Heroku (n.d). Introduction to Heroku. Retrieved from http://docs.heroku.com/heroku
Heroku (n.d). Dynos. Retrieved from http://docs.heroku.com/dynos

d. Inspect the Hello World application “app.rb” file. Answer these questions:
a. What is the purpose of the “/param/:name method”
That method to get the parameter from “/” and shows the message “Hello World”
b. What happens when the user navigates to the /home page?
The page almost does not change because it will be redirected to itself
c. What is the purpose of the :set directive
It is used to specify a location of file. Static files are served from the ./public directory.