I spent yesterday trying to track down some form of ruby web application server. I found a few, but none seem to be actively developed against. I'll shelve the search for now and stay with the zope for now.
Today I'm working on some database normalization utilities. Given that my current project is converting a mostly paper system into an electronic web database system I think they'll come in handy. The idea is to enter each field of each existing form into a descriptor file (probably in xml). Then the utility will look through all the files and group common fields. I don't know how sophisticated it will get -- well see. The utility is being written in Ruby, my new favorite scripting language.