Wednesday 17 September 2008

Version control (or How the world really ended)

I'm at the stage in the life of my app where I am beginning to think seriously about version control. Being a true software developer, I am as gung-ho and devil-may-care as the best of them and I have, thus far, regarded my nightly database backups as application backups too (and, because Oracle Apex lives completely within the database you can do this, but perhaps it is unwise). But now that we've delivered a beta version to the customer I have to take version control a lot more seriously.

The Wikipedia page for Oracle Application Express pre-warns me: version control is ground upon which Apex stands unsteadily. The reason for this is, paradoxically, Apex's main strength: Apex is a joy because it lives wholly in the database and every change you make merely updates the FLOWS_03000 tables - however this means that it is so much harder to obtain source files for your version control vault.

What I have decided to do is this: For every major release of my application I will export my whole application (along with my theme and images) and save the files to my source control programme. However, for the many minor changes and bug fixes that will come between these major releases I will simply export and save the relevant pages. This way whenever I need to upgrade a client with a bug fix all I'll have to do is send them the page files and some sql updating the FLOW_VERSION column of the WWV_FLOWS table (which is where Apex stores the version number of your application).

All of this, I admit, sounds more than a little fiddly. It means I'll need to keep an eye on every page I update for every bug fix, but I guess this is no different from keeping an eye on every form I update when working in Oracle Forms.

Having said that I'd very much like to hear what you do to version control your Apex application.

On a completely different note, am I the only one who has noticed that the week the Large Particle Hadron Collider was switched on is the exact same week the financial markets went into complete meltdown? Coincidence? Hmm, they did warn us that it'd bring about the end of the world.

I'm just saying.

2 comments:

Dan McGhan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dan McGhan said...

David,

See the following post by John Scott for some ideas on how you could automate some of this. Also, because systems like subversion are command line, you could do that part too.


http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net/2006/12/12/backing-up-your-applications/

Regards,
Dan