To run automated tests for your Ruby on Rails webapp, not only do you need your latest database structure deployed to the test database (created by rake db:test:prepare), but you also need some seed data for lookup tables, e.g. like zip codes. Common approaches like adding seed data through rails migrations are discouraged, and plugins [...]
May 2009
My boss threw down the gauntlet Monday morning during our weekly meeting. In relaunching one of our decade old platforms, we couldn’t afford to get bashed by fickle finger of Google Search Results and I needed to take extra care in ensuring all redirects were properly made. With over twenty thousand pages, it was no [...]
I promised you a couple weeks back to share some more code for building your own XFD (extreme feedback device). Embedding Munin graphs is child’s play, so I thought I’d give you a head-start with the Pingdom API. And we all know how critical site response times are to the success of your online business.
Agile software development is a great thing. It makes people deliver real value faster. Based on the agile manifesto there are a lot of processes and frameworks available (XP, SCRUM or Lean Software Development anyone?), which try to enable teams to develop better and more relevant software. So far, so good. In our company, we’re [...]
We had a short load spike on our application servers a couple weeks back. A load of 28 on a 4-core machine is more than uncomfortable – it’s downright dangerous. Luckily, it only lasted for 2 minutes and, just as suddenly as it came, vanished again without a trace. Well, that’s not quite true, because [...]
Read about my ideas for Test First in Operations at The Build Doctor. Julian Simpson (@simpsonjulian) is “The Build Doctor”, or as he states it: Blogger, professional build manager, systems administrator, caffiene addict, dad. We already had the pleasure to publish his great post Partitions and Warfare. Check out Julians posts there. It’s worth it!
For the past couple of months I’ve been slowly enhancing the capabilities of our website monitoring page. It’s displayed on a big 42″ LCD display in the middle of our office where everyone can see the latest up-to-the-minute updates in our page impressions, average page response times, number of RSS subscribers, etc. The page refreshes [...]
