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Can’t I Just Create a Script To Do That?
By Eric Gross | March 25, 2008
The Clarity Action framework is fundamentally a better way to run your existing scripts than what you are likely doing now. Here is why:
- You are passing in the exact information your scripts need to do their job. If your script acts on a database the script is run on an active instance of that database, with environment variables populated with all the goodies: user who has the required credentials to run the activity, location of the software, the name of the instance you can connect to, etc. Rather than having scripts that are comprised mostly of determining the environment in which they are being executed you can focus on your goal. A one-liner that changes a database parameter can be just a single line - there isn’t 100 lines of warm-up code followed by your one line, followed by a number of lines there to report success or failure.
- Speaking of results, Clarity Actions provide a report of the success or failure of each executed script with regard to each object on which the action has been run. In addition there is a summary report containing the results of each round of execution. These results are stored with the results of all of your provisioning & patching activities for a complete record of events, complete with the user responsible (and their IP address).
- Minimizing credentials on the hosts running databases leads to fewer support incidents - you can enforce your security policy at a high-level in Clarity rather than on each host, reducing execution overhead and simplifying management.
- Centralized content - Actions are stored in a central location that can be version controlled and secured so that only certain users have the ability to determine what is run on the database hosts.
- Inputs - Actions are made up of more than a script - a definition of the optional & required inputs is also there to enforce that users provide sufficient information before any activities start.
- Graphical selection of entities - running an action on every machine in an enterprise group is simplified by a real-time display showing all the relevant entities as execution candidates.
I am sure there are many more reasons that our Action framework can breathe new life into your day-to-day activities - happy actuations!
Topics: Clarity Actions, Repeatability, Database Automation, Efficiency