Ike Ellis discusses continuous integration (CI), which involves automatically building and testing software applications whenever code changes are committed to source control. CI aims to prevent integration issues by catching errors early. Key aspects of CI include source control, build triggers, build agents, notifications, and correction of broken builds. CI tools like Jenkins and TeamCity can help implement CI processes. While CI requires setup effort, it offers benefits like higher code quality, easier deployments, and reduced "works on my PC" issues.

1. Continuous Integration
By Ike Ellis
@ike_ellis
www.ikeellis.com
Blog.ikeellis.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ikeellis

2. The Integration/Deployment
Process
• We do it when we feel like it
• We do it daily
• We do it on a schedule
• We do it at every check-in to source control

3. Continuous Integration Means No
Developer Left Behind
Time
Main Trunk
New Dev Working

4. When Integration Time Strikes
• Longer Time = More Errors
• More errors to solve, means more time to solve
errors
• Dev continues, prolonging error correcting time
• Integration might never happen
Time
Main Trunk
New Dev Working

5. Shorten the Time
• Less or no problems to solve
• Deployment can always happen
• Code on every workstation is in a build ready
condition
Main Trunk
New Dev Working

6. CI Benefits
• Avoids the “Works on My PC” syndrome
• All developers can get their work deployed and not
be left behind
• Tests can be run constantly, and breaking tests can
generate emails, thus inspiring code confidence
• Higher quality in code
• Automatically build documentation, remove
unneeded files, include dependencies
• Increased visibility of project
• Deployment can be separate from developers
• Easier to deploy dev environment to new developers

7. Working with Legacy Code
• First thing we do is deploy
• Can we deploy
• Is source control accurate?

8. CI Fundamentals
• Source Control

9. CI Fundamentals
• Build Steps = Automatically Build Stuff = Scripts
• Build Triggers = What makes us build?
• Build Agents = What can we do in the CI
process?
• Build Notifications = Who gets told what and
when?
• Build Correction = What went wrong and who
will solve it?

10. CI Products
• CruiseControl
• JetBrains = TeamCity
• MSBuild/TFS
• Jenkins
• RedGate CI for databases

11. CI Disadvantages
• Takes time to setup
• You actually have to write tests
• Build time should be short. This can take a lot of
effort
• Wounded pride

12. CI Architecture
Dev Environment UAT Environment
Production
EnvironmentCI CI

13. CI Process (An Example)
• Step 1: Check in from source control
• Step 2: Build Trigger begins a build, CI takes
over
• Step 3: CI builds the solution
• Step 4: CI runs all the tests
• Step 5: CI copies data to a UAT server
• Step 6: CI notifies everyone a new build is ready
to test

14. CI Best Practices
• Check-in several times a day
• Merge changes at every check-in
• Don’t break the build (Get
latest, merge, build, check-in)
• If you broke the build, tell everyone, so they can
stop getting latest from source control
• Don’t check-in until the build is fixed
• Notify everyone once the build is fixed
– So they can get latest

15. Problems with the database
• Source control has been spotty
• Willingness to bug fix in production
• Thoughts that indexes are not business logic, and thus don’t
need to be replicated
– So dev/test is not the same as production
• Change management has been very difficult
– Products often have it wrong
• Writing stored procedure/function/SQL tests have not been
the easiest thing to write
– Think about comparing values from separate stored
procedures
– Test the weather
• Basically, you have to want it and fight for it

16. Demo
• TeamCity
• Red Gate CI/Team City Integration
• Red Gate database source control

17. Ike Ellis
• http://blog.ikeellis.com
• http://www.ikeellis.com
• YouTube
– http://www.youtube.com/user/IkeEllisData
• SQL Pass Book Readers
– http://bookreaders.sqlpass.org/
• San Diego Tech Immersion Group
• Twitter: @ike_ellis
• 619.922.9801
• Email address is just my first name @ikeellis.com