Transparency, a 500-mile Journey

There’s an entertaining story that has been going around for years in the sysadmin forums about how a University of North Carolina sysadmin gets a call from a user who’s growing desperate over a problem with the department’s email server: nobody in his department is able to send emails to destinations that are over 500 miles in distance. The sysadmin argues that’s just impossible, email is not bound by physical distances. However, the user insists he has researched the problem thoroughly.

The sysadmin gives in and decides to test the user’s hypothesis. To his upmost surprise, an email to Providence fails while one to New York works. He repeats the test many times over to similar results. To his amazement, the claim was true although it defied common sense.

The user also had a hunch. He pinpointed a system patch that occurred around those days. But the consultant that made the changes attested he “didn’t touch the email system.”

Digging deeper, these were some of the user assertions checked:

  • Emails won’t go past a 500 mile radius (confirmed)
  • System was patched recently (confirmed)
  • Consultant who patched says email is not involved (claim)

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Database Release Automation

Implementing a fully automated, continuous application delivery process requires that ALL configuration items, including those that are stored in a database, be version controlled and deployed as part of the full cycle.

Unfortunately, a recent survey showed that many companies which implement continuous delivery for their application code do not do the same for their database code.

Here are some of the database configuration items that Clarive is capable of managing:

1) DDL, schema

2) DB Scripts, Stored-Procedures, Functions and Triggers, such as PL/SQL or Mongo Javascript

3) Application Configuration stored in the Database

Data?

Why is Clarive concerned about managing data? Well, the answer is rather simple: a great number of applications, be it in-house or closed ERP products, store their configuration in the database. Configuration that affects how the application logic and interface behaves. Usually this means inserting or updating a few rows of data from one environment to the next.

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