This document discusses CartoDB's use of continuous integration and deployment practices. It defines continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. CartoDB breaks its codebase into components and products. It aims to reduce risk through practices like feature flags, canary releases, quick rollbacks, post-mortems, and smoke tests. Continuous deployment provides benefits like early issue detection but requires plans for risks like database locks and integration issues. It is not suitable for all organizations.

1. Continuous Integration
at CartoDB
JUAN IGNACIO SÁNCHEZ
CAS 2015 Basic level talk

2. We’re hiring!
www.cartodb.com/jobs
First things first…
♡ YOU

3. LET’S GET TO KNOW
EACH OTHER!

4. Who has done
a software
deployment,
or release,
this year?

5. Who has done
a software
deployment,
or release,
during the last
6 months?

6. Who has done
a software
deployment,
or release,
during the last
month?

7. Who has done
a software
deployment,
or release,
during the last
week?

8. Who has done
a software
deployment,
or release,
during the last
day?

9. 15 / week
peak: 7

10. Tools?

11. Team!

12. Team!

13. Process!
(just a little)

14. Continuous
deployment is
more of a deal
with the devil than
magic ;-)

15. Continuous deployment is
more of a deal with the devil
than magic ;-)

16. 15 / week
peak: 7

17. Breaking CartoDB up

19. Components
1. Editor
2. Platform
1. SQL API
2. Maps API
3. CartoDB.js

20. Products
1. SaaS
2. On-premise
3. Open Source

21. Product Team
1. Editor: 8
2. Data services: 5
3. Web: 6
4. APIs: 2
5. Systems: 5

22. The GOALS in
the deal

23. Reduce risk

24. SLA-owned

25. Reduce risk
impact x chance

26. Add value sooner

27. Roadmap
7 big* features /
milestone (2 weeks)
Deliver
features

28. 22 PRs
each
week

29. 15 / week
peak: 7

30. users
♡
support
♡
users

31. Summary,
agile basics

32. (quick) feedback

33. (less) cost

34. HOW

35. Integration Delivery Deployment
Continuous…
< <

36. Continuous
Integration
[CI.2] “Continuous Integration is a software
development practice where members of a
team integrate their work frequently,
usually each person integrates at least daily -
leading to multiple integrations per day.
Each integration is verified by an
automated build (including test) to detect
integration errors as quickly as possible.”
XP (1999), Booch method (1991)

37. Continuous
Delivery
[CD.1] “software engineering approach in
which teams keep producing valuable
software in short cycles and ensure that the
software can be reliably released at any
time.”
[CD.2] “You build software in such a way that
the software can be released to production
at any time”

38. Continuous
Deployment
[CD.1*] “software engineering approach in
which teams keep producing valuable
software in short cycles and ensure that the
software can be is reliably released at any
time.”
[CD.2*] “You build software in such a way that
the software can be is released to
production at any time”

39. Continuous Deployment
at CartoDB:
a deal with the devil?
JUAN IGNACIO SÁNCHEZ
CAS 2015 Basic level talk

40. [CI.1]
1. Maintain a code repository
2. Automate the build
3. Make the build self-testing
4. Everyone commits to the
baseline every day
5. Every commit (to baseline)
should be built
6. Keep the build fast
7. Test in a clone of the
production environment
8. Make it easy to get the latest
deliverables
9. Everyone can see the results of
the latest build
10. Automate deployment
Best
practices

41. The CartoDB Way™

42. [CI.1]
1. Maintain a code repository
2. Automate the build
3. Make the build self-testing
4. Everyone commits to the baseline
every day
5. Every commit (to baseline)
should be built
6. Keep the build fast
7. Test in a clone of the
production environment
8. Make it easy to get the latest
deliverables
9. Everyone can see the results of
the latest build
10. Automate deployment
Best
practices

43. Step 0:
hiring
1. Initiative
2. Courage
3. Teamwork
4. Problem solving

44. Step 1:
onboarding
1. Big picture
2. Empowerment:
deploy from the very
beginning, senior
or junior

45. Step 2:
plan
1. Incremental
2. Iterative
3. Accept tradeoffs

46. Step 3:
code
1. Take issue
2. Branch master
3. Code + tests
4. Staging testing

47. Step 4:
pull request
1. Integration tests
2. Code style
3. Code review

48. Step 5:
merge
&
deploy

49. Step 6:
evil devil
• #devops
• Rollbar
• Kibana

50. The devil is in the
detail

51. Feature flags
[FF.1] “The basic idea is to have a
configuration file that defines a bunch of
toggles for various features you have
pending. The running application then uses
these toggles in order to decide whether or
not to show the new feature.” - Fowler

52. Feature flags

53. Feature flags

54. Canary
Releases
[CR.1] “Canary release is a technique to
reduce the risk of introducing a new
software version in production by slowly
rolling out the change to a small subset of
users before rolling it out to the entire
infrastructure and making it available to
everybody.”

55. Quick rollback
Integration issues
Scaling issues
Corner cases
1
2
3

56. Quick rollback Drawback
• Migrations in its own
PR
• Previous PR for
“preparing” ORM
(ActiveRecord)

57. Post-mortem
• Affected components
• Timing
• What happened
• 5W
• Actions

58. Smoke tests
• Manual testing
• On-premise releases
• Tag

59. Wrapping it Up

60. Costs
• Riskier
• Have plan B
• backups
• rollbacks
• soft deletions
• Heavy
instrumentalized
• servers
• fast tests
• real time alerting

61. Costs
• Unexpected DB locks
• Integration issues

62. Benefits
• Cheaper
• Early detection &
diagnosis
• No “release day”
panic
• Small and easy
reverts.

63. Benefits
• Accelerated TTM
• Building the Right
Product
• Test in actual
environment
• Visible progress

64. Is Continuous Delivery
suitable for you?

65. Is Continuous Delivery
suitable for you?
¯_(ツ)_/¯

66. Questions?

67. Thank you!
Juan Ignacio Sanchez
Backend Engineer at CartoDB
juanignaciosl@cartodb.com
@juanignaciosl

68. References
Continuous Integration
[CI.1] Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
[CI.2] Fowler: http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
[CI.3] Duvall: “Continuous Integration. Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk”
http://martinfowler.com/books/duvall.html
Continuous Delivery
[CD.1] Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_delivery
[CD.2] Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ContinuousDelivery.html
[CD.3] Agile Alliance: http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/cd.html
XP
[XP.1] eXtreme Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming
Feature Flags
[FF.1] FeatureToggle - Martin Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureToggle.html
Canary Releases
[CR.1] CanaryRelease - Danilo Sato: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CanaryRelease.html
Misc
[M.1] Booch method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booch_method
[M.2] One Hacker Way - Erik Meijer: https://vimeo.com/110554082
[M.3] https://medium.com/gutefrage-net-engineering/how-to-escape-from-the-
deployment-and-integration-hell-5c55e1628137#.o7d0n3a5h