Reactive is a desktop application framework that gives everything needed to create database-backed applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern of separation. Reactive is highly inspired and also uses code of Rails, the famous Web-Framework for ruby. In Reactive, the model is handled by what's called an object-relational mapping layer. Reactive doesn't impose any ORM, you may choose the one you like but Reactive defaults to Active Record. This means it has baked in support for it, without forcing you to use it. The view part is independant of Reactive, this means that the application has to choose a view provider and feed it into Reactive. This leads to complete freedom for the GUI part. View providers are packaged as gems, so that it is easy for the developer to choose and install them. Look for reactive_view_* to discover some view providers (at this early alpha stage, only reactive_view_wx is available) The controller is part of Reactive and is loosely coupled to the view. Simple convention set up the link.