Agile
Many Oracle developers regard Oracle PL/SQL as an old language. In fact, it
has been around since 1988 and was originally modeled after Ada that was first
implemented in 1983. However, Oracle is still fully committed to the continuous
evolution of the PL/SQL language and it has most object-oriented capabilities,
such as inheritance and polymorphism.
Tool support for Agile development is more widespread for more modern
languages such as Java and C#, but that doesn't prevent Agile PL/SQL development
-- it just requires adoption of a set of well designed best practices, covering:
- Test-Driven Development:
- Automated unit/integration testing of PL/SQL stored procedures using Quest Code Tester for Oracle: This tool requires a minimum of programming effort. You design the test cases in a GUI and the tool generates the PL/SQL test code. However you can still plug in necessary PL/SQL code where the GUI isn't powerful enough.
- A product prototype for recording existing PL/SQL stored procedures' behavior and automatically creating unit test cases. This applies to PL/SQL code that has been verified at other test levels, such as User Acceptance Test.
- Code Coverage metrics for analysis of test coverage trends.
- Refactoring of PL/SQL code for improved testability and reduction of technical debt.
- Mocking of PL/SQL code for improved testability, eg generation of mocks based on well-defined unit tests.
- Continuous Integration: Deploying and executing all automated tests in Quest Code Tester for Oracle as part of the Build process.
- Our preferred Agile methodology is Scrum.
At Ellebaek Consulting we can help your organization introducing Agile PL/SQL development and designing best practices and implementing tools that support these.
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