Re: Enterprise-wide development environments?

Comments embedded.

Galen Boyer wrote:
> How do you guys set up your application building shops?
>
> I want each ejb developer to have a local copy of Oracle Enterprise
> Edition, with the default database installed. I then, through source
> control, will give them the init.ora, startup and shutdown scripts and
> the database code to build the latest database schema.
I don't profess to be a lawyer, but you might run into licensing problems in this scenario. Read that as huge sums of money being owed to Oracle because you'd be using their software for non-trivial use. Most of our developers are taxed to the limits of their productivity just to get the java stuff out the door ... none of them ever raises their hand to take on more work (like learning to be a DBA).

> We then have a larger machine for me and my database developers to work
> on the code while constantly worrying about performance. We then have
> one more honking machine for QA. Another machine for production and one
> hotfix, that looks like production.

We have a relatively small NT box for our developers (but we have dozens, not hundreds, of developers). Each developer is a schema owner so they can keep a copy of the current (or under development) schema. Each of them has a local copy of WebLogic that they can "point" to any of the databases. We have two QA instances (both on the same Solaris box). One instance has the "production" schema and the other has the current "working" schema. Our production machine is at a co-location site (in case our office is destroyed by fire or one of the F-18s from the close-by Marine Air Station makes an unscheduled landing on the roof).

> The thing I don't like about each developer having a local instance is
> that each developer will have to learn enough about the database to be
> comfortable being a proxy for their database administration duties.
Our financial department also wouldn't like to upgrade all our Pentium 3s with all the memory, disk, etc to run an Oracle database on each developer's PC.

> The thing I like about each developer having a local instance is that
> each developer will have to learn enough about the database to be
> comfortable being a proxy for their database administration duties.
When I went on vacation (holiday for those on the other side of the pond), it was very difficult to find a volunteer among the developers to "watch over" Oracle. Sorta forced me to document a lot of the things I do ... so that was good.

You can always find some developers who want to become DBAs. It's a different sort of mind-set, however. At the end of the year, when my boss asks me what I've accomplished, I stammer and stutter ... "well, the database is performing great ... uh ... we can recover from a disaster ... uh." The developers, when asked, can point to these great-looking GUI web pages in all sorts of colors, with widgets scattered all over. The boss is impressed with what the developers have done. The boss asks me what I've done out of the ordinary. There goes my pay raise for this year.

> What do you guys think?
Received on Fri Nov 22 2002 - 12:52:42 CST