I think that Rails controllers do tend to be pretty "fluffy" -- in fact, I would basically call them "view adapters." Replacing them entirely with a Sinatra-style routing and dispatch model would be a fine approach.
However, that still leaves a gap between the page-to-page flow control and transactional logic, which is an area where Rails just doesn't have much help to offer. Having to flatten my entire transaction state into a session hash, which is then (by default) squeezed into a 4Kb cookie, is constraining.
Why not let me instantiate a controller for a particular transaction on the site and control its lifecycle, ala Stateful Session Beans?
However, that still leaves a gap between the page-to-page flow control and transactional logic, which is an area where Rails just doesn't have much help to offer. Having to flatten my entire transaction state into a session hash, which is then (by default) squeezed into a 4Kb cookie, is constraining.
Why not let me instantiate a controller for a particular transaction on the site and control its lifecycle, ala Stateful Session Beans?