Opensocial Application... what to use on the server side?

Question

I would like to create an opensocial application. I have read about how to do this on the client side, my question is what is the most appropriate server side technology to use? My idea requires persistent data and business logic that should be stored and executed on a server. I have some familiarity with creating full blown web apps in ASP.NET and Ruby on Rails. Can I leverage those to build a complete opensocial app (with an iframe or something like that) or do I need to create only a back end using one of those technologies that will be accessed by javascript?

Answer 1

We're using Apache Shindig (Java) for a live project at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/groups

The website hosting the gadgets is written using Ruby on Rails, and all the business logic, data persistence etc is handled there.

We've injected custom handlers into Shindig to proxy everything to the Rails app using REST services. You can make Shindig do as much, or as little as you want. We've got it doing very little, and keeping all the app logic in the parent app hosting the main site. Shindig just serves up gadgets and handles security etc.