Java deployments are often messy, error-prone, and manual, leading to delays in making software available to users. In Part 1 of a two-part article in the Automation for the people series, automation expert and Stelligent CEO Paul Duvall identifies a collection of key patterns for developing a reliable, repeatable, and consistent deployment process capable of generating one-click deployments for Java applications.

Although many development teams use version-control systems to manage code changes, they can struggle when developers code off the same code base, in parallel. In this Automation for the people installment, automation expert Paul Duvall shows how to effectively tag, branch, and merge source code using the open source, freely available Subversion version-control system.

The goal of refactoring is to improve the overall design of the code; making it easier to read and more easily maintained.  Deciding what code to refactor is often based upon the code's smell, or a hint that something has gone wrong somewhere in your code.  In the latest installment of Automation for the people, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall explains how to use static analysis tools to identify code smells to refactor, with examples showing how to improve odiferous code.

For developers, creating documentation for any software project can be a tedious and lengthy task.  But imagine if the documentation could be produced at the click of a button.  In the latest installment of Automation for the people, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall, illustrates how you can automate the generation of Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams, build figures, entity-relationship diagrams, and even user documention using various open source tools.

Load testing most often occurs just before applications are deployed, when optimally, the testing should be done long before the last step in application development.  In the eleventh installment of his "Automation for the people" series, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall explore techniques for creating automated tests using JMeter, running the tests as part of an automated build, and scheduling the tests to run automatically every day.

Anti-patterns delay or prevent the benefits you can experience with Continuous Integration.  In the tenth installment" of his Automation for the people" series, and in the second installment of a two-part article, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall presents best practices when setting up a CI environment and how to avoid, what he calls, the CI anti-patterns. 

In the ninth installment of his "Automation for the people" series, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall, shows you how to make the most from the practice of Continuous Integration by learning what not to do.

In the eighth installment of his "Automation for the people" series, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall, demonstrates how Raven, a build platform built on top of Ruby, leverages the power of a full-featured programming language with the simplicity of a build-centric Domain Specific Language.

In the seventh installment of his "Automation for the people" series, Stelligent CTO, Paul Duvall, demonstrates how you can discover architectural deviations by writing tests using JUnit, JDepend, and Ant to discover problems proactively instead of long after the fact.

Explains how to recognize a tightly coupled system and then disentangle it using the Dependency Inversion Principle. 

Demonstrates how to run Selenium tests programmatically, using TestNG as the test driver.

Provides an overview of various automated developer tests along with examples that you can add to your build process and run continually using a Continuous Integration system.

Walks you through the hardest part of GUI testing with TestNG-Abbot, which is understanding how a user scenario will play out.

Demonstrates a multifaceted approach to dealing with the less predictable defects in your code by combining aspect-oriented programming (AOP), design by contract, and an easy-to-use generic validation framework called OVal.

Provides examples of installing, configuring, and using static analysis plugins in Eclipse so that problems can be prevented early in the development life cycle.

Introduces XMLUnit, a JUnit extension framework that meets all of your XML validation needs.

Makes the case for performance testing as part of the development cycle and shows you two easy ways to do it

Evaluates various feedback mechanisms that one can incorporate into CI systems and explains why without feedback mediums, like email or RSS, builds in a broken state have the tendency to stay broken.

Demonstrates how to automatically sort and run these categories at varying frequencies within a Continuous Integration strategy.

Describes how to improve a number of common build practices that prevent teams from creating consistent, repeatable, and maintainable builds.

Demonstrates how incorporating Cargo into your testing routine will lighten the load of crafting repeatable tests that verify Web applications.

The eighth article, in IBM developerWork's series “In Pursuit of Code Quality”, by Stelligent President Andrew Glover, compares JUnit 4 with the features of TestNG considers what's unique about each framework and reveals three high-level testing features you'll still only find in TestNG.

The seventh article, in IBM developerWork's series “In Pursuit of Code Quality”, by Stelligent President Andrew Glover, focuses on using JUnit's StrutsTestCase framework, with DbUnit, to facilitate the challenges of testing Struts Action classes.

The sixth article in IBM developerWorks’ series “In Pursuit of Code Quality,” by Stelligent President Andrew Glover, explores three important ways to measure code complexity, based on method

The fifth article in IBM developerWorks’ series “In Pursuit of Code Quality,” explores how to use complexity metrics and the Extract Method pattern for targeted refactoring.

The fourth article in IBM developerWorks’ series “In Pursuit of Code Quality,” explores how to use coupling metrics to support your system's architecture.

The third article in IBM developerWorks' series “In Pursuit of Code Quality” explores Cyclomatic Complexity and how one can obtain this interesting metric and then what to do with the data.

The second article in IBM developerWorks’ series “In Pursuit of Code Quality,” explores how the Framework for Integrated Tests (FIT) facilitates communication between the business clients who write requirements and the developers who implement them.