JoshSweeney

WapSnap: Snapshots and SugarCRM Tools

Since writing An Introduction to WapSnap the ALT-Invest team has made good progress in the current prototype. Once a few more areas get solidified and the application is installable it will be moving to the Alpha phase and made available to developers interested in providing thoughts and feature requests.

For this installment I wanted to highlight two sections of the product. The first being the snapshot options and the second being the built in SugarCRM tools area.

Snapshot Options

The image below is a row from the Instances section of the product that shows what application instances have been added to WapSnap. The first three columns from left to right are Instance Name, Instance File Path, and Instance Database. These column show the data that is used by WapSnap in order to know where to pull data from when executing a snapshot.

The 5 images are where the functionality of WapSnap starts. In the application you can hover above any button and get a bubble with a description. The buttons from left to right are Snapshot files and database, Snapshot Database,  Snapshot Files, List Instances, and Delete. By browsing to list instances you can select the instances and start the comparison.

Snapshoting the filesystem will make a full backup of the files and hash them for later comparison. Taking a snapshot of the database provides a table by table backup of the database along with table hashes for comparison. The table by table breakdown will allow WapSnap to quickly detect changes in and compare single tables including there structure and or the data within.

SugarCRM Tools

One new section that was very recently added was the tools section. Most developers that work with specific software packages often end up writing tools and scripts that are used daily to speed up development, troubleshooting, or other tasks. In the future we would like to give them the ability to add in their own tools but for now the WapSnap team will be providing them. The first tool is the SugarCRM SOAP Browser.

With the WSDL browser you can quickly connect to a SugarCRM instance and get the modules available for integration via SOAP. Once you click Get WSDL you will be provided the list of modules. When a module is clicked you are provided the available fields for that module. We have found that the WSDL browser makes it easier to identify available sections in SugarCRM to integrate with and we hope that you discover the same.

We plan on adding more tools as we find things that are helpful to other developers. So please comment and let us know what features or tools can help streamline your efforts.

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Tags: snapshot, sugarcrm wsdl, WapSnap, wsdl browser

An Introduction to WapSnap

I have been actively Tweeting about WapSnap and speaking to various individuals about what it does. Today I determined that it was time for a proper introduction.

WapSnap meet world, world meet WapSnap.

Many of the intricacies about  WapSnap‘s product positioning are still in limbo. For now all that I can say is that it is a web based snaphsot and comparison utility that will compare both files, and databases to detect changes. Most peoples first response has been,  “doesn’t Git and SVN do that already?” My answer is, yes but only for the files.

The file comparison will be similar to a WinMerge and other comparison utilities like those built into Git. Where I would really like to differentiate is in the database comparison and manipulation area.   WapSnap will be able to compare databases all the way down to the field level in order to detect changes in applications. This leads to why I started building WapSnap.

Although others and myself attempt to use best practices when developing applications, sometimes developers end up working on the production box instead of doing an update from their favorite repository. This increases the risk of error and possibility of breaking production applications. The first response to this is to restore backups and risk losing data entered since the last backup. The alternative to backups is to track down the issue and try to fix it as quickly as possible. If you try to fix it the question will become, what all was changed? This is where WapSnap comes in. If you snapshot both the files and database before the changes are implemented then you narrow the search area to check for errors.

This becomes even more helpful for those using open source applications like Joomla and SugarCRM. Through many discussions I have found that users of open source applications commonly work on production instances because it is easier, cheaper, faster, and the applications take plugins or modules that most think work out of the box and won’t break their system. Yet another example of WapSnap‘s handiness is when someone installs a module, it breaks their app, then they uninstall and the app is still broken. WapSnap will easily let you detect the crumbs left behind in the file system and database so that they can be removed in less time that of what is needed to do a large restoration from backup.

Another huge benefit is that you learn more about the application. Take SugarCRM for instance, does anyone really know everything that happens behind the the scene we you use the Module Builder to build and deploy a custom module? Most people on the SugarCRM forums don’t and neither do I, most just speculate and build on past knowledge to guess what it is doing. The same goes for deploying 3rd party modules in any application.

Last but not least, where in the world does WapSnap comes from. I needed a name for a project that I was working on that took snapshots of web applications so I decided on W-Web, AP-Application, SNAP – Snapshot. Nothing special but it is staying until I come up with something better or decide to stick with it.

If you know of other tools that are helpful that have similar functionality please comment and let me know.

Tags: dev tools, open source, snapshot, WapSnap