Is it a good idea? I've never seen it done before.
The application in question is an enterprise project deployed as an EAR file on an app server. Properties include path to log file, name of JMS topic, etc. The intention being properties can be queried at runtime from the database, rather than having to redeploy the entire application, which might cause downtime and require developer/administrator attention.
How else would I modify runtime properties of the enterprise application?
Thanks.
You can do that or you can use properties file (config file) to store such info as I have seen this done on multiple projects. The preference of choosing between database and properties file is dependent on many factors but assuming the data are too little to be on database table, it's really fine for both solutions.
Related
i am using wso2 api-manager 02.01.00 on a linux system. The Api-Manager is deployed at Folder A. The Databases (h2) are deployed ad Folder B which is not in Folder A. The datasources in /repository/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml are pointing correctly to the databases in Folder B. I configured it like that, because i want do preserve the databases if there is a deployment. (Becaus a fiew Developer are using the API-Manager and they don't want to loose their Data.) But it seem, that WSO2AM_DB.h2.db is created new if there is an api-manager-depoyment. I think this, because i had a look to the DB-Size. I started with a Size of 1750KB for WSO2AM_DB.h2.db. I published a view API's in the Manager and the Size increases to 2774KB. Then i did a Deployment and the size returned to 1750KB.
Effect is that API-Store/Publisher says "There are no APIS published yet".
But i could see the APIS at Application Subscriptions and in Carbon Resources at /_system/governance/apimgt/applicationdata/provider/admin.
I tried to force a new Indexing with this, but it doesn't change anything.
Could i configure at any place, that the Database should not be created/manipulated at start?
Meanwhile i'm really desperated of not solving this problem.
Maybe you could help me.
Thank you for your Time.
WSO2 does not recommend to run on H2 database. You need to use a production database such as mysql, oracle, etc. H2 is only for tryouts.
Basically, WSO2 servers store data in databases as well as use the file system. For this kind of a deployment, you need to do the following.
Point to an external database. If you are using this for demo purposes, still you can go with the current mode (H2 database).
Use dep-sync. The content which comes under the WSO2_HOME/repository/deployment/server location needs to be preserved. You can use SVN based dep-sync or rsync. Basic idea is that for a new deployment, you need to have the data of the previous deployment.
Solr Indexing preservation. If you have hundreds/thousands of APIs in the system, it would take time for indexing. To avoid that you can copy the content of WSO2_HOME/solr to the new deployment.
I'm doing a small pilot project trying to implement Sql Server Data Tools sqlproj projects in order to better bring our databases under source control. In my organization, we have separate no-trust domains for test environments of various purposes, so these domains of course have their own isolated active directory accounts.
The documentation is still somewhat sparse and I don't really know where to go for more information on this toolset, especially considering the extraordinary amount of churn in Visual Studio's history of database assets.
So far, the only idea I've really had would be to make separate sqlproj projects specifically for the security objects each separate domain, separate from the other schema objects. My hope is that somehow I can tie my actual database schema to those at deploy time and also to somehow switch which security project I'm using in the build. I have no idea if that's feasible though.
Has anyone that uses Visual Studio sqlproj projects had to deal with this? Is there a best practice for this kind of thing?
If you have different settings for each environment then the easiest is to either leave them out and not delete them when you deploy or to have a post deploy script that sets them up manually.
Normally for handling different configurations I would suggest using sql cmd variables (on the properties of the project there is a page for setting these up) but when you create a login you cannot use a variable to create it so that falls over!
There is an example on how to setup a post deploy wrapper for just this case:
http://schottsql.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/ssdt-setting-different-permissions-per.html
Good luck with ssdt, there are some strange quirks but it enables so much!
Twist to the standard “SQL database change workflow best practices”
Background
ASP.NET/C# Web App
MS SQL
Environments
Production
UAT
Test
Dev
We create patch scripts (XML and sql) that are source controlled in Mercurial. We have cmd line utility that installs patches to DB (utitlity.exe install –patch) from a Release folder the build packages. Patches have meta data that helps with when patch should run and we log patches installed in a table in the target DB. All these were covered in the 3 year old question:
SQL Server database change workflow best practices
Our Problem/Twist
I think this works well for tables, views, functions and stored procedures. We struggle with application configuration data. Here are some touch points on application configurations.
New client. BA performs system study and fit analysis. Out of this comes a configuration word document of what application configurations need to be setup. Note some of these may also come in phases over time. We need to get these new configurations into the system for the developer and client UAT.
Developer works on feature request or bug fix. A new configuration change comes out of that change. The configuration needs to make it into the system for testing and promotion to UAT and up.
QA finds that the developer missed an associated configuration change. That configuration needs to make it into the system for promotion to UAT and up.
Build goes to UAT. Client performs acceptance testing but find they really want to change another unassociated configuration and have it promoted with the changes. In other words they found they want to change a business process by a configuration. The configuration needs to make it into the system for promotion to PRD.
As the client operates in PRD they may tweak application settings. These configurations need to make it into the system for future development and testing.
The general issue is making sure we are accounting for all the configurations and accidently not miss any during promotions which causes grief.
Our Attempts At A Process
a. We have had member of the QA team to write patches (xml and sql) and check those in. This requires a build to make sure those get into the package. With this approach it really just took care of item 1 above and we fell apart on the other items. The nice thing is for the items that made it into the patches it was just an install with the utility.
b. A developer threw together a Config page on the application. All the configurations could be uploaded and downloaded via XML document but it requires the app to be running. For item 1, member of QA team would manually setup configurations in the application and then would download the Config.xml file. This XML file would be used to upload configurations in other environments. We would use text diff tool to look at differences between config.xml files from different environments. This addressed item 1 and the others items but had problems. Problems were not all configurations made it into the XML document (just needs to be fixed by developer), some of the configurations didn’t have a UI in the application so you still had to manually go to the database on some, comparing the XML document with text diff was difficult at time (looked mostly due to sorting but I’m sure there are other issues), XML was not very human readable and finally the XML document did not allow for deleting existing incorrect or outdated configs.
c. Recently we went with option B, but over time for a new client we just started manually tracking configs and promoting them manually by hand (UI and DB) through the promotions. Needless to say lots of human errors.
So we have been looking at solutions. Eventually it would be great to get as much automation in as possible. I’m looking at going with the scripting approach and just focusing on process, documentation and looking at using Redgate data compare in addition to what we had been doing with compare on config.xml. With Redgate we have to create views though and there is no way to create update scripts from that approach except to manually update the scripts. It does at least allow a comparison without the app running. I’m also looking at pulling out the configs from our normal patches and making it a system independent of the build (utility.exe –patch –config). When I say focus on process it will be things like if we compare and find a config change either reported by client or not, we still script it, just means we have to have a process in place to quickly revalidate config install before promoting to the next level. As for documentation looking at making the original QA document a living document instead of just an upfront document. The goal is to try and enhance clarity and reduce missing configurations during promotion. Unfortunately it doesn’t improve speed of delivery.
Does anyone have any recommendations or best practices to pass along. Thanks.
Can I ask exactly what you mean by application configuration. I'm interpreting that as both:
Config files in the web application
Static reference data inside the database
Full disclosure I work for Red Gate. You might be interested in taking a look at Deployment Manager, it's a deployment tool that deploys applications, databases and configuration. It's free for up to 5 projects and target servers.
The approach it uses is to package application code and the database state into packages. These packages can be deployed into dev, test, staging and production environments. The same package is deployed to each environment.
Any application configuration that needs to change between environments is handled in one of the ways below:
Variable substitution in web.config. The tool allows you to specify override values for variables in these files, and set these per environment/server
Substituting the web.config file per environment.
Custom powershell scripts that are run pre/post deploy. You could use these to execute custom SQL based on the environment or server.
Static data within the database, using SQL Source Control's static
data feature. I've written a blog post about how to supply
different sets of static data to different environments/customers.
This allows you to source control the application configurations and deploy them to different environments.
Background:
I am using GitHub to store a ZF2 application.
The database schema + the actual data stored inside the schema are not being stored inside a version control. At the moment I am in development mode, so I have some database dump scripts that I load into the database when I need to. I also tweak entries in the database via phpMyAdmin when I need ongoing granular control for immediate testing purposes. I am also looking into using Doctrire ORM, so my schema will be part of my code via Annotations, and that will be checked into GitHub. Doctrine ORM will generate the actual schema for me, although it is still a separate step in the deployment process. The actual data however, will still be outside of the application and outside of the repository and currently has to be dealt with separately and is not automated.
Goal:
I want to be able to deploy ZF2 application and the database schema, and the data onto Zend Server and have it "just work" in the most automated, least manual way possible.
Question:
What is a recommended, best practice way to deploy every aspect of ZF2 application in the most automated, least manual way possible and have it "just work"? Let's focus on the Development and Testing mode here, as in Production it may be good to have separate deployment steps to protect against accidental live data overwrites.
You can try Phing (http://www.phing.info/) for deploying your PHP application, adjusting directory permissions, running database migrations, running unit tests, etc. I used Phing in couple of my projects with great success.
I'm configuring an installer for our product which, up until now, was distributed as a war file, usually on tomcat. Once tomcat has exploded the directory, the user has to open a properties file and set their database connection information. I'd like the installer to do this (we're using install4j) but there doesn't seem to be a built-in way to modify a text file inside a war file. I could just have the installer deploy the app as an exploded directory, which would save me the trouble here, but what do I lose by deploying like that instead of deploying the war?
It might work better to set up the database connection as a JNDI Datasource, rather than hand-editing a properties file inside the webapp/ directory. This is especially important if you want to allow users to re-deploy the application from the .WAR archive without overwriting their local configuration changes.
Of course, the JNDI setup isn't going to be trivially accomplished through the installer, either, since the mechanism used varies from app server to app server. However, any competent Java application server administrator should know how to configure a named datasource. Furthermore, by delegating responsibility to the app server, you allow your users to take advantage of connection pooling, clustering, and any other features provided by the datasource implementation bundled with their application server of choice.
Not much I would think - perhaps a bit of disk space, but if that's not a problem you'd be fine. Have you thought of having the installer generate the properties file and using a ZIP library (.WAR is really a .ZIP - rename it to a .ZIP and see what you get :) ) to replace or add it in?