Core Technologies

OpenRain leverages a large variety of tools and technologies to build software, so this is by no means a comprehensive list. We have our preferences, however, and lean towards web development and web design using the following technologies...

1. Ruby on Rails (RoR) and freely available libraries. RoR is distributed under the Ruby license and may be used free of charge. Test cases are generally written using rspec, TestUnit and similar BDD/TDD libraries. Payment gateway integrations are most likely performed using the ActiveMerchant library that supports PayPal, Authorize.net and many other popular payment gateways. Open Source database drivers are used as well as numerous libraries for handling functions such as file uploads and image resizing.
2. PostgreSQL or MySQL Community Edition server. Both are licensed for unlimited free use in production sites.
3. Apache httpd or Nginx web proxy balancers. Both are licensed for unlimited free use in production sites.
4. CSS 2, tested for cross-browser compatibility. CSS 3 is generally not (yet) used since support for the standard has not proliferated across all popular browsers. Some browsers--most notably Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)--may require a separate .css file to be written due to limitations in the browser itself.
5. JavaScript for AJAX and visual effects as called for in visual design. jQuery tends to be used as the primary JavaScript library for common effects. Prototype and Prototype-based libraries may also be used. Note that copy protecting custom JavaScript code is not plausible since it must be executed unencrypted on the end-users browser.
6. Capistrano scripts for deployment to Linux servers. The OpenRain team has internally developed scripts suitable for production rollout processes, and will integrate such scripts as necessary without license or other fee.
7. Adobe CS4/CS3 file formats. Vector designs are done in Adobe Illustrator while rasterized graphics are created in Photoshop. Our web graphics are optimized for file size and download speed while adhering to the graphic designers intended vision as closely as possible.
8. Much, much more... Call us now to inquire!