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CodeIgniter and Reliability
#1

[eluser]Sayian[/eluser]
Since first finding CI, I've been very impressed with everything it offers.

However, as I grow more serious about using this framework, one question remains on my mind due to forum posts I have come across, and my own personal interest in the long term protection of my project.

Here are my questions I would like honest, seasoned answers to please.

1. If I develop my app in CI, what are the chances of it breaking upon update and me left without the knowledge of the inner workings to be able to fix the issue until a solution is released?

2. How long is backwards compatibility usually maintained for?

3. Has anyone had a bad experience using CI where their site was down for an extended period of time without a hot fix?

If these concerns are not an issue then I am sold on CI.

Thank you in advance for the replies.
#2

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
Quote:1. If I develop my app in CI, what are the chances of it breaking upon update and me left without the knowledge of the inner workings to be able to fix the issue until a solution is released?

Negligible likelihood - but of course it's a possibility. More on this in a minute, though.


Quote:2. How long is backwards compatibility usually maintained for?

Hmm .. we're talking here about a framework that goes to great pains to support PHP4, remember.

Also you're under no obligation to upgrade to newer versions. If the current version does what you want, and passes all your testing criteria, then just stick with it. Easy.


Quote:3. Has anyone had a bad experience using CI where their site was down for an extended period of time without a hot fix?

I think perhaps this reflects a misunderstanding of operations.

If you're about to upgrade any component of your system, there's a chance it's going to break it - disk driver, through OS security patch through Apache through PHP through CI. You have procedures in place to minimise that risk.

First is backup - so you can recover to where you were before you started. For most people this would be a 'tar' command and takes about 30 seconds to run. It alone means you simply wouldn't have a 'site down for an extended period of time'.

Second is test server to run the upgrade on, before shunting it into production. If your site is important enough to be this concerned, then it's important enough to warrant a $2 worth of disk space to run up a VM and test patches and updates.
#3

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="Sayian" date="1237186013"]1. If I develop my app in CI, what are the chances of it breaking upon update and me left without the knowledge of the inner workings to be able to fix the issue until a solution is released?[/quote]

The simple solution is not to update. In fact, I believe it's recommended that you don't update unless you have a very good reason to do so. CodeIgniter is seriously secure; the only security issues I know of, come from bad configuration or poorly written code on the end user's part.

If you built an application on a particular version of CodeIgniter, then there's really no need to upgrade, as it should always work. If you want a feature of a new release, you have the option to port the feature to your version of CodeIgniter if possible, or to make some minor changes to your application if it's not working as it should. As you know, you should never do a straight upgrade on a production server. Everything should be done in a safe location, and tested before uploading.

[quote author="Sayian" date="1237186013"]2. How long is backwards compatibility usually maintained for?[/quote]

Honesty? The only thing I've known that's not been backwards compatible, is the database abstraction layer, or more specifically, the Active Record class. Some applications have been known to break, but they've been simple things to fix. But again, I don't see any real reason for them to have updated their CodeIgniter installation in the first place. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[quote author="Sayian" date="1237186013"]3. Has anyone had a bad experience using CI where their site was down for an extended period of time without a hot fix?[/quote]

Why would your Web site go down? Any problems should be caught during development, and would not be the fault of CodeIgniter directly, but rather a problem caused in some way by the end user, directly or indirectly.

The beauty of CodeIgniter is that if, for some unlikely reason, a bug is found, you can implement your own hotfixes. The community are always happy to help out, and in the absolute worse case scenario, you may have to hack a core file, but it's unlikely.

The development cycle for CodeIgniter is very slow, and there's a good reason for it, too. CodeIgniter will never turn into a bloated framework. It is by nature, lightweight, and as such, other than some bug fixes and improvements, I wouldn't expect too much in the way of expansion. The whole idea is that CodeIgniter provides enough basic functionality to carry out just about anything you could ever need to do from within a Web application. Any other functionality can easily be implemented by way of helpers, plugins or libraries. CodeIgniter is a foundation to be built upon, it's not a CMS, a blog, a forum, photo album or anything else, but it can be any of those things and more if you make it so.




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