HowTo: Stage Gateway Configuration Files

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Intro

This article outlines a concept how you can include the Gateway Configuration files for mappings and the main gateway-tool-configuration.xml in the staging process. The goal is to have a single process for each type of server file transfer.

Advantages

• No need to touch any Gateway file on TEST or PROD environment.
• File transfer utilizes the standard Integrity Stage Process

Current Status

In Integrity Standard, the Gateway server files resides in the directory server/data/gateway. Therefore those files can not be staged. But it is a common request to stage them like any other server file.

Our Approach

The staging process takes up all files which are stored in server/data/public_html. So at first, we put the gateway XML files beside the Gateway template files. Additionally, we use a trigger script to copy the staged files from this directory into the target directory. During this copy process the trigger will also change the server name to the right one.

The Process in Detail

The following process is implemented in my current project:

1. The developer will make additions or corrections to the config or mapping file on DEV server and will test and maintain them in <DEV>/data/gateway
2. Once ready, the developer will copy the final version into the directory <DEV>/data/public_html/gateway, along with the Gateway templates for import and export.
3. A configuration manager will start the stage process to the next <TEST> environment and will pick up - when approved - the changed files.
4. When the stage process to TEST is completed, he will run an ad-hoc trigger. This trigger will take all provided XML files from /data/public_html/gateway and will copy them to /data/gateway. Furthermore, this trigger will change the target server name to bring them in sync with TEST.
5. When approved on TEST, the configuration manager will start the stage process to the <PROD> environment and will again pick up the changed files.
6. After completing the stage process to PROD, he will run once more the ad-hoc trigger. The trigger will perform exactly the same steps as outlined in step 4, now for PROD.

Hint

All our files are under version control in Integrity Source. For this we use a dedicated project environment.

Trigger Script

The trigger script is attached.

It contains one more improvement. The "Part 3" is already under test and allows us to stage parts of the gateway-tool-configuration.xml for import and export selectively. This allows us to test an export configuration but let an import configuration faster reach the PROD. If you are interested, I can send you more details about this additional possibility. 

Next Steps

Interested? Then contact me directly using the contact form in this forum here. Please provide your email address that we can exchange information directly.