Colleced from Oracle #enabling-the-future-today-feature-flags-in-oracle-integration
Feature Flag Overview
Within Oracle Integration we are moving to a model that allows us to trial new features without making them available to everyone. Everyone runs the same codebase but feature flags control what is available to a specific instance.How It Works
Each new feature is given a flag that is used to control its availability. For instance the flag for the small footprint OIC agent was oic.adapters.connectivity-agent.light-weight-agent. If this flag was enabled for a given OIC instance then they could download the lightweight connectivity agent. Other OIC instances running the same code but with the flag turned off would not offer the new agent.
Flags are controlled from a central system and can be updated in real time by Oracle development and operations. This means that feature flags can be turned on very quickly, and also if a problem occurs they can be disabled.
Feature Flag Lifecycle
Feature flags have a lifecycle as illustrated below.
The different stages are:
Internal Only
You may see a product manager demo features on an instance that are not currently available, if using a production pod these may only be available to internal users. This is where we try things out internally before turning them on for any customers. Once we are happy with the feature internally we are ready to share it with selected customers and move the feature to Feature Controlled. Note that this change in stage does not require any code changes, it just alters our internal approval process to enable the feature.
Feature Controlled
Once a feature enters the feature controlled stage then a customer may request that the flag be enabled for one or more of their OIC instances. If approved then those instances will have the flag enabled and the feature will become available within a few minutes of being enabled. Again there are no code changes to the customer instance, just the change in the flag status from disabled to enabled in the central feature flag server.
Feature Controlled General Availability
Once we are happy with the stability of a feature we will enable it for all instances. This again does not require a code change. We leave the flag in place so that if a specific customer has a problem we can disable the feature just for them or roll it back. This is a safety measure in case problems occur that were not caught by internal users or early adopters of the feature.
General Availability
Eventually the flag controlling the feature will be removed. This has no impact on the end user, it just allows us to keep the code paths clean and remove unused code that has been made obsolete by the new feature. End user will see no difference between this stage and the previous one. So I mention it here only to explain how we keep our codebase clean.
How to check features from OIC console:
Login your OIC instance and go to profile and then to about section. You can see the Enabled Features.
No comments:
Post a Comment