Original air date:
Tues., Aug. 7, 2012, at 1:00 p.m. EDT

Binary Repositories: The unsung hero of configuration and release management

How confident are you with the contents of what you are about to release? Do you know every change since the last release? Can you reproduce the release at will or rollback to a prior release? Many of the teams we meet struggle with these fundamental issues.

The most successful teams solve these problems by leveraging a binary repository or — in ITIL terminology — a Definitive Media Library (DML). By providing an authoritative source for release artifacts, a well-managed binary repository can help address issues of compliance, traceability, and audit while enabling releases to proceed more quickly. Complex deployments can reference a manifest of versions stored in the repository. Combined with deployment inventories, a binary repository provides a valuable starting point for impact and risk analysis.

But the benefit of using a binary repository is also felt earlier in the software-development lifecycle: By enabling effective component-based development, a binary repository can enable faster build times, facilitate more efficient collaboration between teams, and reduce the learning curve for new developers.

When both Development and Operations reference the same repository, hand-offs are cleaner and fewer mistakes are made.

For SCM and release management professionals who are concerned with audits or improving the efficiency of the software-development lifecycle, Eric Minick invites you to join him for this presentation where they will address:

traditional approaches to controlling binary artifacts, including their shortcomings;
essential elements of well-managed binary repository and inter-project dependency management; as well as
patterns for adopting a binary repository and implementing dependency management.

Even if you cannot attend this session live, please sign up. Once the recording is available, we will automatically send you the details!

Eric Minick, UrbanCode Lead Consultant

Eric Minick is a lead consultant at UrbanCode where he helps customers get the most out of their build, deploy and release processes. He has 8 years of automation experience throughout the application life-cycle in roles as a developer, test automation engineer, and support engineer. Eric has been at the forefront of Continuous Integration for 8+ years and has worked on three generations of UrbanCode's products.

About UrbanCode

UrbanCode enables organizations to deliver software to production servers faster (physical, virtual, or cloud); resulting in decreased time to market, and accelerated pace of innovation. uDeploy, our Deployment Automation product, establishes repeatable, error-free, scalable application deployment processes, and provides visibility into what version is where. uBuild, our Build Management product, establishes repeatable and traceable build processes for large organizations with hundreds or thousands of developers, and provides visibility into organizational best practices; allowing development teams to scale while maintaining quality. Our approach is to harness the innate capabilities of computers to handle repetitive tasks in an error-free manner, while providing valuable information that can be leveraged by people to engage in critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving.