[external] An application for importing applications

External content by Daniel Krüger; July 20, 2024; 
The original post has appeared on daniels-notes.de

Should we import applications via an application instead of the Designer Studio?
In my opinion yes. But this is mainly influenced from a partner perspective who has to deploy the same process to multiple customers who require that these kind of things are documented.

What would be the benefit of having an application:

1. When something is automated, it can be tested, and therefore there's lest to document.
2. Depending on the setup you may have the same processes in multiple databases but these have different configuration. Business entities, connections, global costants etc..
3. We have a version history for the import in the system and not somewhere else, so we know who did it when with which configuration file. 
4. We can keep track of all the imports.
5. Some elements are always overwritten as they cannot be configured.

Creating a snapshot of the relevant elements before the import and after the import will allow us to change some settings back, if there was an issue. For example, if a business entity is deactivated in on database but not in the other. Or when the application group, application supervisor should be different etc.