Tagging and Branching Releases¶

We recommend setting up a process to create tags and branches in the VCS, in order to manage the versions that a project goes through during its life.

Consider the following ideas:

• Add a tag to the repository every time you deploy a database to testing and production. This ensures that a project can be brought to the exact state it was at the time of a release so developers can track issues.

• Create a branch for each major version of a project if several versions of the same project must run in production at the same time. This may be necessary when a new version of a project introduces changes that break the backward compatibility and client applications cannot be updated in time.

• If there is no companywide standard regarding the names of branches and tags, a good naming convention for tags and branches is adding the version number to the end of the project. For example, if the project is called project1, the branches would be named project1-X.Y.Z and the tags, project1-vX.Y.Z (the v, indicates that the element is a version), where:

  • X is the major version. Major versions are defined as versions that break backwards compatibility or that bring substantial changes to the project.

  • Y is the minor version. Minor versions are versions that do not include big new features and that do not break the compatibility with client applications.

  • Z is the revision number. Versions that have small changes such as the ones introduced to fix small issues in the views created, performance improvements, etc.

To tag and branch the different versions, install a Git client (e.g. SourceTree), check out a copy of the repository where the database of the project is on your local machine and add the tag/branch.

Recommendations for the Testing Environment¶

When possible, the testing environment should be similar to the production environment. That is:

• The configuration of the hardware/virtual machine where the Denodo servers run should be similar.

• The data used should be representative of the data that will be found in production.

• The performance of the data sources and network should be similar.

These guidelines ensure that the conclusions drawn from the tests performed on the testing environment will apply to the production environment.