Most large organizations already follow a corporate backup policy. However, for individual developers, maintaining local backups before major changes can be critical in avoiding the embarrassment of calling an IT manager for help. Every developer has their own way of accomplishing this; while local backups are necessary, their actual implementation is a matter of taste. If accuracy and ease of restoration is the primary concern, full backups may be taken and stored locally. If space is a concern, differential or record-level backups may be taken.

Batch automation is frequently included by both database and operating system vendors; and typically, these two software categories approach the problem differently. Databases on the windows platform, for example, typically offer much greater scripting and control flow than the native Windows task scheduler. Similarly, Unix-based database vendors offer batch automation and job scheduling beyond the simple utilities, like cron, that are bundled with the OS.

Testing mainframe applications, such as CICS screens, for usability is significantly different than ...

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.

Doug Linder

One of the major problems in any organization is the oldest ...

One of the companies I work for has millions of employees in total, and keeps records on them in several databases that exchange data through flat files. While this system seems to violate the principle of a single source of data, it’s been in place for years and works well. There must be a reason for this replication of data, and for allowing some inconsi...