Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Promoting code using configuration
plans
Promoting code refers to the activity of taking code from one environment, such
as the development environment, and deploying it to the next one, such as the
test environment. A typical software development promotion lifecycle sees code
moving from development to test to QA (quality assurance) to production. As
code is successfully tested in one environment, it is deployed to the next.
Why we need configuration plans
Unlike Java applications, SOA composite applications do not rely on property
files to maintain environment specific configuration. Many SOA projects may in-
clude references to other external services, for example,
http://payment-
processing-server-dev:7777/proc/servlet/createCustomer
. As
you can see from this URL, the developer is referencing some external develop-
ment server as identified by the hostname
payment-processing-server-
dev
. This URL is hardcoded within the code and ultimately included within the
deployable SAR. Prior to deploying this code to the test environment, the admin-
istrator must find a way to ensure that the test URL is referenced instead (which
may have a different host, port, and protocol) as shown by
https://payment-
processing-server-test:7778/proc/servlet/createCustomer
.
The SAR may potentially have other environment-specific settings such as URLs,
JNDIs, and hostnames hardcoded in the SAR. One option is to manually extract
the contents of the JAR file, manually edit all entries, and re-JAR it. This is a
manual, cumbersome, and error prone process. Another approach is to attach a
configuration plan to your composite at deployment.
The configuration plan is a single XML file that is attached to the SAR at deploy-
ment time. It is similar to a search-and-replace functionality, ensuring that refer-
ences of one environment (such as development) are replaced with the next one
(such as the test environment).
