D12: apply appropriate recovery techniques to ensure the software solution being developed is not lost (Software Development Lifecycle - Implementation and Build phase).
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process used by the software industry to design, develop and test high-quality software. It aims to produce software with the lowest cost, highest quality, and in the shortest time possible.
There are several stages in the SDLC, including planning, requirements, design, development, testing, and deployment. The question pertains to the "Implementation and Build" phase, also known as the "Development" phase. During this stage, developers start the actual coding based on the design documents and models created in the previous phases.
Now, to ensure that the software solution being developed is not lost, recovery techniques are applied. These are strategies to preserve and recover work in case of different incidents, such as a hardware failure, software bugs, data corruption, or even human errors. Some key elements of these techniques include:
Version Control Systems (VCS): A VCS like Git, Mercurial, or SVN allows developers to keep track of all changes to the project files. It can revert files back to a previous state, revert the entire project back to a previous state, review changes made over time, and more.
Backup and Restore: Regular backups of the development environment, including code, databases, configurations, etc., should be made. This helps in restoring the system in case of data loss. Modern cloud solutions provide this capability.
Fault Tolerance and Redundancy: Depending on the complexity and requirements of the project, you might use various strategies to increase the system's reliability, including replication (multiple copies of data), and redundancy (additional or alternative instances of resources).
Disaster Recovery Plan: It's a structured and detailed set of instructions aimed to recover a system and its data in case of a disaster. It should be prepared, maintained up-to-date, and tested regularly.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): In a CI/CD pipeline, code changes are frequently merged and tested, and software is often built and deployed. This decreases the chances of catastrophic failure and makes recovery easier.
Automated Testing: Regular and thorough testing can catch issues early before they cause data corruption or loss. This includes unit tests, integration tests, functional tests, and more.
An apprentice software developer should be familiar with these techniques and concepts, and how to apply them to ensure the continuity and recoverability of their work.