My Books
Test-Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility
This is my most recent book, released in March 2013. It is a comprehensive system that can enable test-driven development in any database development environment. At least, any environment I've found so far.
Reviews:
Reviews:
- Amazon: ★★★★★: "Read this book and surpass your peers."
- Amazon: ★★★★★: "...practices and patterns you need to know to succeed at TDD with databases."
- i-programmer: ★★★★: "Guernsey obviously understands databases and TDD well..."
References:
Transition Testing: Cornerstone of Database Agility
This was my first published work. It was released in 2008. At the time, the things it espoused were not commonly-held beliefs. As of February, 2014, the basic principle - testing how databases change in addition to what they do - is still not a common practice.
However, if you look at the tooling available in 2008 and what's available today, you'll see that some of the basic concepts are gaining popularity. For instance, keeping track of the exact steps executed against a database and tracking which ones have been executed is far more common and supported by many more tools today than it was in 2008.
My Articles
Five Ways to Optimize Encapsulation in Your Software Architecture
My most recent publication. In this article, I the reader knows encapsulation is a good thing and wants to tweak their architectural process to get more of it. There is also some advice about remodeling your corporate culture to help others better contribute to making quality design decisions.
Applying Test-Driven Development to Architecture to Keep Your Team on Target
Coauthored with my friend, Mike Brown. This is a basic explanation of how driving from tests can help keep an organization focused on value.
By no means does this represent a complete theory. The concept of architecture needs to be completely remade for the modern age and there's no way to address everything that needs attention in a single 3,000-word article.
This is, however, a call to action.
How Value-Stream-Oriented Architecture Can Help You Create Better Software
I fought being made an architect where I worked at the time of this article's publication. Maybe I still do. I don't know.
Anyway, shortly before I wrote this, I realized that there is a way to be an architect and still foster a collaborative, agile work environment for your team. More often than any other affliction, architects lose sight of value.
The technique in this article helps an architect deliver on the "long-term vision" with which they are often tasked while keeping your eyes on the prize. At the same time, it combats the second-most-common problem architects suffer: too much detail too early.
Ten Tips for Constructing an Agile Database Development Environment that Works
When my book was released in 2013, I was asked to write an article that gives people a taste of what it has to offer. This is it: a whirlwind tour of the first half of my book in about 3,500 words.
