I am building a new application for work using ruby rails. The project requires that I use an already existing database. This is the first time i have had to do this. The application I am building is primarily a data driven website using the existing databases’s information. That means I will not be designing and creating models for the ORM. I find myself a bit surprised how different it is to develop this way.

I have almost exclusively done domain/model-driven-development which means I spend a large amount of time putting upfront thought into my applications database and designing the models. Instead, I am reading documentation and familiarizing myself with the existing data. Fortunately, the database is well normalized and enjoy finding all the ways to extract useful data.