On the importance of CI/CD practices for database applications

Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Journal of Software: Evolution and Process
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
36
Issue / Number
12
Pages / Duration
e2720
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Wiley
Place of publication / Event location
Hoboken
Edition
Version
Programming language
Assignee
Practice partner / Client
Abstract
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) automate software integration and reduce repetitive engineering work. While the use of CI/CD presents efficiency gains, in database application development, this potential has not been fully exploited. We explore the state of the art in this area, with a focus on current practices, common software tools, challenges, and preconditions that apply to database applications. The work is grounded in a synoptic literature review and contributes a novel generic CI/CD pipeline for database system application development. Our generic pipeline was tailored to three industrial development use cases in which we measured the benefits of integration and deployment automation. The measurements demonstrate clearly that introducing CI/CD had significant benefits. It reduced the number of failed deployments, improved their stability, and increased the number of deployments. Interviews with the developers before and after the implementation of the CI/CD show that the pipeline brings clear benefits to the development team (i.e., a reduced cognitive load). These findings put current database release practices driven by business expectations, such as fixed release windows, in question.
Keywords
Subject (DDC)
330 - Wirtschaft
Project
Event
Exhibition start date
Exhibition end date
Conference start date
Conference end date
Date of the last check
ISBN
ISSN
2047-7481
2047-7473
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
Yes
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
Gold
License
'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'
Citation
FLURI, Jasmin, Fabrizio FORNARI und Elzbieta PUSTULKA, 2024. On the importance of CI/CD practices for database applications. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process. 2024. Bd. 36, Nr. 12, S. e2720. DOI 10.1002/smr.2720. Verfügbar unter: https://doi.org/10.26041/fhnw-11085