I'm searching for anything that could help me using MySQL (or SqlLite) as if it was a non-relational database (like couchDB) in ruby. Is such a thing exists?
<a href="http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql" rel="nofollow">http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql</a><p>This is a really good article that can get you started with this idea. You would have to develop your own solution but a lot of good ideas here.
It's in Python rather than Ruby, but Infogami's ThingDB and its successor Infobase are distributed key-value stores built on top of PostgreSQL:<p><a href="http://pharos.infogami.com/tdb" rel="nofollow">http://pharos.infogami.com/tdb</a><p><a href="http://openlibrary.org/about/tech" rel="nofollow">http://openlibrary.org/about/tech</a><p><a href="http://infogami.org/src/" rel="nofollow">http://infogami.org/src/</a>
Are you looking for something like Berkeley DB? It's essentially a persistent key/value store. You don't have sql, but you do have ACID compliant features.<p>Summery of a programmer's usage here: <a href="http://simonwillison.net/2003/Nov/26/discoveringBerkeleyDB/" rel="nofollow">http://simonwillison.net/2003/Nov/26/discoveringBerkeleyDB/</a><p>Some Docs here: <a href="http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/reftoc.html" rel="nofollow">http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/reftoc.html</a>
Python not ruby, but the language on top is a minimal piece in their setup: <a href="http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql" rel="nofollow">http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql</a>
If you are talking about using MySQL like memcache (so persistence isn't an issue) check out MYISAM MEMORY tables - <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/memory-storage-engine.html" rel="nofollow">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/memory-storage-engine...</a><p>Super fast but if the server dies so does all your data...