Release It!

"Feature complete" is not the same as "production ready."

Whether it's in Java, .NET, or Ruby on Rails, getting your application ready to ship is only half the battle. Did you design your system to survive a "Slashdotting"? Or an influx of real world customers from 100 different countries? If you're a developer and don't want to wear a pager for the rest of your life, this book will help.

Enterprise Engineering shows you how to design and architect your application for the harsh realities it will face. You can avoid the pitfalls that cause typical enterprise applications to show uptime in the "four eights" instead of the fabled "five nines." You'll learn how to design your application for maximum uptime and performance.

Everything changes after Release 1.0. The consultants leave; key developers get reassigned to new projects, and the wild and free environment of development gets replaced by change review boards and defect reports. And the public starts beating on the system. Your application needs to be ready to live in that environment-without you.

Out in the real world, your system may have to endure the huge traffic spikes of a Slashdot posting, or a sudden influx of international customers in the middle of the night, or enjoy such popularity that you can't even take it down for maintenance.

Other books on design and architecture only tell you how to meet functional requirements. They help your software pass Quality Assurance. But painful experience has shown that "feature complete" is not even close to "production ready."

With a combination of case studies and practical advice, EnterpriseEngineering will help you avoid the pitfalls that cost companies hundreds of thousands-sometimes millions-of dollars.