Evolving Web Application Development Frameworks: A Survey of Ruby on Rails, Python, and Cloud-Based Architectures

Abstract

The popularity of web apps and other forms of online application development has skyrocketed in the last few years. It is crucial to choose the optimal technology or framework, especially given the proliferation of options. This survey explores three major paradigms: Ruby on Rails, Python-based frameworks and cloud-based architectures. Ruby on Rails is focused on the MVC model and consists of an ideal structure of working and the philosophy of “convention over configuration,” increasing productivity along with focusing on such values as standardization of work. Two widely used Python-based frameworks are Django and Flask; these have the options for extensive flexibility, scalability and libraries to support virtually any kind of application that one might want to build. Cloud computing, with its layers and service models, brings great scalability, cost efficiency, and a rich resource pool to deployment. Additionally, some research space has been addressed that needs to be tackled related to the improvement of frameworks, flexibility and their scalability as well as long-term sustainment of the systems; these areas pose a need for applying inter-disciplinary solutions incorporating cutting-edge technologies for building more reliable and efficient web applications.