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.

One of the major problems in any organization is the oldest code hasn’t been tested against more new...

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Alan J. Perlis

One of the companies I work for has millions of employees in...

Testing mainframe applications, such as CICS screens, for usability is significantly different than testing a web or windows application. CICS applications excel in data entry environments in which a mouse is seldom used, such as use within a call center, and testing should keep this benefit and intended application in mind.
 
One list of tes...