Integration of Ab Initio with CI/CD Pipeline

12/2/2021

“All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once”
- Bill Watterson, American Cartoonist
Integration of Ab Initio with CI / CD pipeline is the pillar of the modern ETL system. This bridges the gap between engineering and operating teams by automating the design, testing and delivery of applications.

Why do companies need a CI/CD pipeline?

  • Continuous Integration (CI): The technological aim of CI is to establish a clear and standardized way of designing, packaging, and testing applications.
  • Continuous delivery (CD): Most teams work in multiple non-production environments, such as development and testing environments, and CD ensures that there is an automated way to push code adjustment to them.
  • Continuous deployment: It is a higher degree of automation, in which a build/deployment occurs automatically whenever an enormous modification is made to the code.

What are the steps in integrating Ab Initio with CICD Pipeline?
Step 1: Identify an integrator
An integrator unifies all the components of ETL testing for continuous validation cycles. Plugin availability, usability, and cost-effectiveness are the important criteria to be considered when selecting an integrator.
Step 2: Determine the source code repository
The code repository stores all the Ab Initio job executions and data validation scripts so that users can easily access the latest versions.
Step 3: Create an ETL code execution script
A wrapper script should be designed in such a way that if any ETL job is aborted or stopped, the status of the wrapper changes to ‘fail’ and vice versa. This status must be communicated to the integrator so that it can generate a suitable response.
Step 4: Define the data validation approach
It is important to build the validation script in a way that it is executed on the same server as the ETL job. It helps in eliminating the need for manual intervention in executing validation queries on the database using any interface.
Step 5: Combine the ETL code execution and data validation jobs
A combined wrapper can be created that envelops the validation wrapper as well as the ETL job execution wrapper and provides the input to the integrator. This will be useful for regression testing where existing ETL jobs and validation queries must be re-executed.
Step 6: Enable automated status reporting
Once data validation is completed, the status is updated in the tracking tool. An email with the above details is sent to confirm the status for job execution and data validation.
Step 7: Create the deployment script
A deployment script must be created and linked with the integrator such that it triggers the deployment of code without any manual intervention once the CI workflow is completed.
Why should you choose Ab Initio among other ETL tools in implementing the CI/CD pipeline?

  • High testing efficiency: The testing efficiency can be increased by automating Ab Initio job execution, data loading, data validation as well as results and reporting.
  • Reduced time consumption: It helps to increase time to market by reducing the turnaround time in production and deployment, where time is reduced from days to minutes.
  • Reduced effort rate: It helps in reducing the regression effort and system testing effort by 50% and 40% respectively through validation in time-boxed sprints.
  • Cost-efficient: It helps in saving cost by reducing the dependency on multiple external teams as execution can be triggered by any users like business analysts, developers, etc.
  • Quality improvement: It helps in improving the quality by reducing the error numbers in code through automation.
  • Reliability: It helps your organization to go live maximally safe.
  • High accuracy: Any degree of automation is always a positive change. So, there will not be any space of error.
    Conclusion
    Every organization aims to achieve more and contribute to the success of the project, but sometimes they tend to run into complex technological errors. Thus, CI/CD integration with Ab Initio would be a one-stop solution that solves technological errors to maximize profitability in organizations.
    To discuss your data warehousing needs or how we can build ETL tools such as Ab Initio along with a CI/CD pipeline in your existing infrastructure setup, feel free to reach out to our experts. Send your queries or RFQs here.