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axaptadynamics-ax-2012continuous-deploymentdevops

What's the purpose of an integration server?

I'm new to DevOps, so forgive me if this is trivial, but given the following workflow, what is the purpose of the integration server?

I've been given the following steps as an example of an approach to DevOps at my organisation :

  • Developers check in changes to source control (TFS).
  • Build server checks for changes.
  • Artefacts of the build are deployed to an "integration server" which has a copy of our ERP on it.
  • A release management application takes the output from this ERP environment and moves it to test, pre-production, and production environment as and when.

Is this approach correct, and if so, is the purpose of an integration server merely to provide a working implementation of code, that isn't accessed for any means other than moving code onto other servers?

Solution

  • My answer is making some assumptions on what it sounds like is going on in your environment.

    When you check in changes to source control with AX, it's adding *.xpo text files of the code/objects that are your changes only.

    It sounds like your "integration server" is a build/staging server. Imagine these two scenarios:

    1. You have a customization with 3 objects, and you add 2 of the objects to source control and forget one. When you build on the integration server, it could have compile errors because that missing dependent object.

    2. In your development environment, you create test forms and jobs that are basically junk you are experimenting with. You do not add these objects to source control. You wouldn't want this code to be deployed to your other environments, so the integration environment ensures the code is strictly from the repo.

    Doing full compiles/syncs against the integration will also help identify issues. Then you can deploy the environment in its entirety to your other environments.

    The big thing to realize is that your repo is really only your changes to the base (sys/syp) code. So part of the integration/build process is your code & base code combining.