Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Summary
In this chapter we detailed our best practices for configuration and lifecycle management of an APEX
application. You have seen the components that make up our proposed solution.
As you have seen, the typical approach to version control of your sources using a local sandbox
approach doesn't work well in a database environment. Although our approach does have a downside—
you cannot tell exactly which developer made which changes to the source code, for example—in a
typical in-house software development project this is not the biggest concern. But we certainly do have
problems when working in an Oracle instance with a team of developers. We might overwrite each
other's changes when working on the same packages concurrently. Furthermore, we have to make sure
to propagate all relevant changes, from the development environment to the test and production
environment. Since we might have to propagate 100 or more changes within a single patch set, we need
an approach which is consistent and safe. We were clearly focusing on these real-world problems when
we designed this approach.
Our solution still contains some manual procedures (like registering the scripts and creating the
files manually), but we continue to work on automating some of these currently manual procedures. You
can find the ongoing development here:
http://www.opal-consulting.de/tools
.
Still, we have learned to value this approach: it has proven its usefulness in multiple real-world projects
and has definitely improved the quality and maintainability of our applications.
