Recently, I was leading the efforts of implementing an enterprise build solution to manage web services that are developed using CapeClear. The organization already had Meister in place for build management and were using it to build Java applications that were developed using WSAD and MyEclipse IDE.

As a senior consultant in IT for over 18 years, and working in Configuration and Build Management with Openmake/Meister for about 11 years, I knew exactly what we can do for this implementation to put Meister’s benefits to work for us and boost efficiency.

At the organization, there were two teams performing the initial setup/configuration activities for an application in order to use the enterprise automated build system. One team performed setup tasks related to change to production for the application and the second performed setup tasks related to building the application.

These were some of my thoughts…maximize the use of the infrastructure and tools that are already in place. Do not reinvent the wheel. Keep the build solution simple.

The approach for CapeClear Build automation solution was straightforward. Use Meister’s CapeClear ESB build method for web services. Work with the stakeholders to define standards and provide the foundation to have a reusable parameterized template that can define the openmake project settings for the applications. This eliminated the step of setting up an openmake project for each application. We went one step further. We set up a parameterized template for the target definition file itself and generated the build script for the web service applications dynamically. This eliminated another setup/maintenance task for each application. To tie it all together we used Meister workflow and perl scripts. My design for this solution came to life with the help of one of my team members who did the perl coding and a lot of testing for this implementation. She did a great job!This automated build solution works great!

We were able to eliminate the manual activities of setup and creation of build scripts performed by the second team completely. Now we have the Meister build solution for CapeClear web services in place that is even more manageable,flexible,and scalable and definitely boosts efficiency.