Database building and patch automation.

The project goal was to clone the production environment databases into the test environments and customize them according to the specific needs of that environment.

Installing the required patches into the different environments.

I faced the challenge that creating these various environments required huge amount of manual work and required to edit and check too many configuration files during the patch installation process. The content of these files changed frequently and they were environment dependent. Many colleagues edited these files and it was easy to make a mistake in the configuration settings.

I managed to overcome the problems by creating a framework with its own separate database and a graphical user interface. It was easy to use and everyone could edit the settings at one place and the actions were logged and version controlled properly. The framework had many well defined and fine grained rules and based on these rules checked the content of the patch files. It sent an alarm in case of any file contained a prohibited data, link or command.

The client gained the following benefits. Both the execution time and the quality of work improved significantly. The 4-5 hours long manual work was completed in 1-2 minutes and the problems related to misconfigurations vanished.

The hidden or known issues I managed to solve in this project. It was very hard to track manually the contents, the changes and the proper settings in the vast amount of files.