Development problem/solution scenarios that cry out for better tooling solutions
The following are several user stories that I’ve collected from my recent visits with customers, schools, and partners. From time to time we are all faced with problems that cry out for database tooling and development tooling solutions. Which ones fit problems you have looking for a solution? Maybe you have additional scenarios, send them to davidi@embarcadero.com.
- Reviewing and Auditing Object and Data Models - have you ever had the need to use tooling to review, audit, and update data models and object models? Are you asked to ensure that you are following established company column naming and coding standards?
- System Archeology – imagine your company just acquired another company. Along with the company comes a complex application system involving terrabytes of data in multiple databases and millions of lines of code. The original developers do not come with the acquisition and the documentation and information about the system is no where near up to date. What do you do?
- Database and Code Refactoring - have you ever had to refactor a database and the code in a system? Wouldn’t it be simpler to do both refactorings at the same time? Or, at least when you have to refactor one or the other, you are also presented with an agenda of tasks to accomplish?
- Change Management for your Data and Code – many of us have a Change Manager or Source Code Control system for our programming code. Do you also have change management for your database?
- Profiling and Tuning for databases and programs – as developers we often use code profilers to clean up the hot spots in our applications. Some use profilers throughout the design, build, and run phases. Do you also profile and tune your databases? Shouldn’t you profile and tune the code and data at the same time?
- Security and Compliance – how many of you have to report on their system development security and standards compliance? Are you supposed to report on security and compliance work for your databases and programming code?
- Documenting Projects – We all document. We all put comments in our code and database designs and implementations. Do you also add the data and object models? Do you include audits, metrics, project status, unit and system test plans and implemtations with your project documentation?
- Web Portal(s) for your code and database – do you have web portals that are kept up to date for management and team members for your database and application development projects? Wouldn’t it be great if a web portal was automatically populated and updated from the work that you and your team are doing at every step in the design, build, run process?
- Rapid Development of databases and applications – Organizations must get more value for every IT dollar spent and reduce costs where feasible. You also need to quickly respond to business opportunities and competitive threats. Do you have the tools you need that will help rapidly create and modify your databases and applications that work with more operating systems, databases, and platforms?
- Debugging Code and Data – You are a developer. You’ve been stepping through code for awhile trying to track down a tough bug. You’ve looked at the parameters you’ve set up for a database stored procedure call or you’ve created the perfect dynamic SQL statement. You are now at that fateful point in your debugging process where you hit step and wait for the result or set of cursors to come back from the database server. Wouldn’t you like to step into the SQL engine, step through the stored procedure?
The Embarcadero All-Access on-demand, multi-platform, software development and data tool chest gives you the tools you need to quickly & effectively design, build, and run your software and database applications. Take a look!