Middleware: As a developer, I would want agility in my SOA development and operations for the following three main reasons:
When I perform SOA integrations, I would like them to run hassle-free for at least five years.
I want to cut down the cost of testing to 25% of the project cost.
I want my development and operations teams to communicate effectively and in real time for better productivity.
The way to achieve agility is to adopt DevOps;or even better, to automate the DevOps. There are many platforms to achieve automation of DevOps, leading to agility. For instance, Chef, Puppet, Jenkins,or more comprehensive platforms such as DevOpsXpress that does a great job.
According to me, there are the following five phases of a typical software development life cycle:
Software-Development-Life-Cycle
In this article, I’m sharing my experience of automating each of the above steps with the help of specific tools. If you are planning to implement SOA integrations of Oracle Fusion Middleware in your organization. Read on to gain insights on how DevOps automation will help you start the SOA journey in the right approach.
If you’re already using OFM SOA integrations, read on to get insights on how DevOps automation reduces risks and transforms your business, bringing agility and consistency.
1. Automate design and build of Fusion Middleware SOA Environments
The numerous configurations, architecture designs, and other details of the design phase are often stored as tribal knowledge in the mind of the consultant. However, if the consultant were to leave midway through the project (as it has occasionally happened, in my experience) and be replaced by a new one who is not aware of the configurations used thus far, the code would fail at installation due to inconsistent configuration settings. When I was trying to build my installation platform, I tried out a few automation modules that would help me automate the design as well as build of the environments, in order to avoid situations like above.
Solution: Of all the tools I tried out, MintPress, which helps Fusion Middleware administrators to manage an error-free OFM environment aligned with the standard reference architecture, was the easiest to use. It comes with pre-defined blueprints that may used to provision SOA, BPM, OSB, WCS, and IDM, and easily create the environment.
2. Automate SOA Code Development and Code Quality
Code review is a critical step in this phase. As we all know, manual code review is a time-consuming and laborious process. A routine chore that skilled resources avoid undertaking. Not only that, often, there is no set standard for reviewing code, or the standards are not enforce by all reviewers, leading to inconsistent or ‘patchy’ code quality.
No one needs such patchy codethat may give rise to crippling ‘code bombs’. The likes of which shut down NYSE for almost four hours in July 2015.
