Ways in which Docker improves software development process
Docker is an application that is based on the idea of homogeneous application, containers. It is an open-source project that provides a way to automate the deployment of applications inside software containers that encapsulates code, runtime, system tools, and system libraries. The use of this technology is exciting and it reduces complexity through container abstractions (i.e. hiding the implementations), leverage automation, provides better security and enhanced distributed computing capabilities. It implements a high-level application programming interface to provide lightweight containers that run processes in isolation. It is regarded as world’s leading software containerization platform.
Testing our software after its creation is most important. Docker helps in automating our testing and continuous integration. It allows us to run our tests in containers as well as isolate in development and deployment. Techaffinity also offers comprehensive Software Testing services, for more information click here.
Docker helps development team’s achiever next-generation efficiency in software delivery. It helps in doing away with many challenges associated with traditional virtualization. Virtualisation is basically the partitioning of physical things into several logical units. For example, multiple partitions in our PC, but only one physical hard drive. It got improved and developed over a period of time. The first step in software delivery is designing the app, the second is writing the code, the third is building the code inside testing environment and the final step is packaging the tested app and delivering it to users. Docker allows developers to place the app inside a container which is a software-defined environment, generally portable. This environment is abstracted from host system. The main advantages of containers are mentioned below:
We only have to build the app once — A Docker app runs inside a container and the container can run on any system with Docker installed. We don’t have to build the app and configure it for multiple types of hardware platforms or operating systems. We only have to build it once for Docker.
We get greater consistency between testing environments and production environments — Development using Docker automatically ships an app inside a container during its testing phase. It means that the environment in which we test is identical to the one in which the app will run in production. Developers can have much more confidence that end users won’t experience problems.
We get more modularity — Development with Docker containers is perfect for micro-services approach to app design. Complex applications are split into discrete units which reduces complexity of managing and updating the app.
Docker instances are lighter-weight and it helps to translate to a less complicated build process plus the ability to host many more containers on a single physical server.
DevOps is an approach to software development and delivery that focuses on seamless collaboration between the people writing code and the people who administrate apps in production. Their goal is to break down the silos that have distinct part of the app delivery process from the others, and to enable continuous delivery of updates to an app. That’s Docker and DevOps go hand-in-hand.
Docker Hub is basically a cloud-based registry service that allows us to link to code repositories, build our images and test them. It stores manually pushed images, and links to Docker Cloud so we can deploy images to our hosts. It provides a centralized resource for container image discovery, distribution and change management, user and team collaboration etc.
