The features of Rails (also known as Ruby on Rails) that make it the preferred platform for web development also make it an attractive option for creating tactical business applications (TBA). Rails is built on the cross-platform object-oriented Ruby language. Both Rails and Ruby are open-source software. Rubys powerful features, including dynamic classes and closures, and programming concepts, allow Rails to deliver excellent productivity. The Rails community uses a green field approach to web development so as avoid the negative connotations attached to enterprise software. These include the reputation of being highly complicated, costly to build and hard to maintain. Some of the popular websites that run on Rails include 43 things, 37signals and Odeo. Rails is also an appealing alternative for developing TBA, which is a web front end to enterprise relational databases. TBAs are basic input and automation solutions that perform specific requirements. TBA platforms such as Access, Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro, among others, are non-web technologies that are tricky to manage and distribute. Page-oriented scripting languages such as PHP and ColdFusion write codes that are jumbled, verbose and not easy to manage. Rails, on the other hand, removes too much declarations, type definitions and casting, XML configuration files and annotated metadata by capitalizing on Rubys short syntax and dynamic qualities. Rails also makes it easy to write controllers and render HTML pages.