Daily Software Builds using ANT

Daily Builds are fast becoming a recognised component of software development.

In the context of an Oracle database, a regular daily build can show inconsistencies (invalid packages, structural changes) immediately and highlight exactly where something has gone wrong.

Traditional development methods saw the programmers developing and testing only once, maybe twice and usually at the end of the project. With this Agile technique the Build will tell you as soon as anything goes wrong, thus allowing you to fix it before it’s too late.

Also of great value is the fact that you can take a “branch” at any time from the current stable build and promote this to the Live application with confidence that, at least, the system is stable. (Obviously functional testing is still required)

In this example we will demonstrate using ANT for create our daily build.