--- title: "#358: How I Reduced My DB Server Load by 80%" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 358 published_at: "2017-07-20" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/358" --- #358: How I Reduced My DB Server Load by 80% This week's Ruby and Rails news[Read this e-mail on the Web](http://rubyweekly.com/issues/358) Ruby WeeklyIssue 358 — July 20, 2017 Richard Schneeman[How I Reduced My DB Server Load by 80%](https://schneems.com/2017/07/18/how-i-reduced-my-db-server-load-by-80/)How one line, hidden in a common ActiveRecord validation, caused large spikes in database response time and what to do about it. Tom Van Eyck[Ruby Concurrency: In Praise of Condition Variables](https://vaneyckt.io/posts/ruby_concurrency_in_praise_of_condition_variables/)A complete rundown of mutexes, condition variables, and how to use them together to write efficient threading code in Ruby. 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Stefan Wintermeyer[Rails Web-Scale is Expensive](https://medium.com/@wintermeyer/rails-web-scale-is-expensive-b86facc11381)A response to last week’s [Is Ruby Too Slow for Webscale](https://www.speedshop.co/2017/07/11/is-ruby-too-slow-for-web-scale.html) that takes issue with Rails being fast enough. Enclose.io[Enclose: Compile Your App Into An Executable](http://enclose.io/)It essentially bundles a Ruby interpreter along with your code into an executable, so not a compiler in the classic sense. [GitHub repo](https://github.com/pmq20/ruby-compiler). Fred Heath[Nim for The Discerning Rubyist](http://www.bootstrap.me.uk/bootstrapped-blog/nim-for-the-discerning-rubyist)[Nim](https://nim-lang.org/) is a statically-typed language with lots of syntactic sugar that can be called from Ruby as shown in this post. 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ABLY.IO In brief - [RubyKaigi 2017 (Sep 18-20 in Hiroshima, Japan)](http://rubykaigi.org/2017/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news [Speakers announced here](http://rubykaigi.org/2017/speakers). - [Keep Ruby Weird 2017 (October 27 in Austin, Texas)](https://2017.keeprubyweird.com/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news Always a fantastic event. - [Rails 5.1.3.rc1 and 5.0.5.rc1 Released](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2017/7/19/Rails-5-1-3-rc1-and-5-0-5-rc1-released/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news Official Rails Blog - [Webinar: How to Become a Performance Driven Engineer](https://www.vividcortex.com/resources/how-to-be-a-performance-driven-engineer?utm_campaign=Ruby%20Weekly&utm_source=ppc&utm_medium=Webinar%3A%20Performance%20Driven) VividCortexSponsored - [Implementing Inheritance with Parameters](http://rubyblog.pro/2017/07/implementing-inheritance-with-params?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Ever wondered how `ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]` works? Here’s how. Sergii Makagon - [When Distributed Locks Might Be Helpful in Rails](http://docs.knapsackpro.com/2017/when-distributed-locks-might-be-helpful-in-ruby-on-rails-application?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Knapsack Pro - [A Few Helpful RSpec Hints](http://jakeyesbeck.com/2017/07/12/a-few-rspec-helpful-hints/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Jake Yesbeck - [How to Safely Store API Keys in Rails Apps](http://blog.arkency.com/2017/07/how-to-safely-store-api-keys-in-rails-apps/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Pros and cons of four approaches to this issue. Arkency - [Use Refinery as a Headless API-First CMS](https://medium.com/@bricesanchez/use-refinery-cms-as-a-headless-api-first-cms-3450b84d9ed1?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial The example creates a Middleman site as the presentation client for the Refinery CMS API. Brice Sanchez - [An In-Depth Look at Ruby's Exception System](https://honeybadger.leadpages.co/exceptions/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) Ruby's exception system is more powerful than many people realize. This book shows you how to get the most from it. HoneybadgerSponsored - [Front-End Sadness to Happiness: The React on Rails Story](https://blog.shakacode.com/front-end-sadness-to-happiness-the-react-on-rails-story-at-goruco-2017-d63b8fd26ca4?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) story Justin Gordon - [Audited vs Paper Trail: The Battle for Auditing & Versioning in Rails](https://revs.runtime-revolution.com/the-battle-for-auditing-and-versioning-in-rails-audited-vs-paper-trail-17ad0011ecd9?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) opinion Runtime Revolution - [How to Interpret a Ruby Stacktrace when Debugging](https://gorails.com/episodes/debugging-how-to-interpret-a-stacktrace?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) video Go Rails - [Creating Custom Rails Generators](https://www.driftingruby.com/episodes/creating-custom-ruby-on-rails-generators?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) video Drifting Ruby - [Secure your Codeship builds with BrakemanPro for Ruby on Rails](https://documentation.codeship.com/general/integrations/brakeman-pro/?utm_source=BrakemanIntegration&utm_medium=rubyweeklysecondary) tools Codeship and BrakemanPro have partnered for a more secure devops workflow. CodeshipSponsored - [inherit_gem: Share RuboCop Rules Across All of Your Repos](https://blog.percy.io/share-rubocop-rules-across-all-of-your-repos-f3281fbd71f8?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tools Mike Fotinakis - [Racecar: A Simple Framework for Writing Kafka Consumers](https://medium.com/zendesk-engineering/introducing-racecar-fdb5178bcafb?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Zendesk - [KBSecret: A Secret/Password Manager Backed by Keybase](https://github.com/woodruffw/kbsecret?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code William Woodruff - [Spreadsheet Architect: Convert Ruby Objects to Spreadsheets](https://github.com/westonganger/spreadsheet_architect?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Weston Ganger - [Twilio Releases Next-Gen Ruby Helper Library](https://twilioinc.wpengine.com/2017/07/next-generation-ruby-helper-library-release.html?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Twilio Blog Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/peterc) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict), and published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). 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