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Git Integration: Streamline your Data Projects with Astera
Imagine your team of developers is working on projects with hard deadlines. Whenever developers make changes to the code, the project manager must call a meeting to ensure a change in one part of a codebase doesn’t result in a problem somewhere else, not to mention the additional quality review. The result would be missed deadlines courtesy of never-ending back-and-forth due to inefficient collaboration between the development and quality assurance departments. This problem multiplies when team members are working on multiple overlapping projects.
Thankfully, we have project management and version control tools, like Jira, Trello, Git, and others, to tackle this nuisance and keep track of version history and maintain branches so that this process is simplified.
This blog will discuss how Astera’s built-in Git integration helps streamline data management projects. Before we get to it, let’s learn more about Git and its benefits.
What is Git?
Created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, Git is an open-source, distributed version control system (DVCS) that allows multiple team members to collaborate effectively. The DevOps tool makes it simple for developers to track and record changes made to the original files.
Git’s main feature that truly sets it apart is its branching model, which allows programmers to effortlessly create, delete, and merge branches.
Benefits of Git Integration
Here are the advantages of using Git integration for your data management projects:
1. Speed
Git’s distributed repository model allows users to perform most operations locally without communicating with a server. As Git was designed for the Linux kernel and is written in C, it has significant speed and performance advantages over the other version control systems. Therefore, it is highly suitable for handling large projects.
2. Flexibility
The support for various types of non-linear development means users can simultaneously have hundreds of thousands of parallel branches, allowing for maximum collaboration.
3. Incredibly Easy to Learn and Use
As the best version control system in the market, Git is widely used by businesses and individuals– as evidenced by the active community. It’s also the easiest to learn and use. Chances are your development teams are already using it for version control, in which case it makes total sense to opt for a data management solution that natively supports Git integration.
4. Security
Git uses the Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA256) to secure source code, file contents, and changes to history. This cryptographic algorithm protects the source code against malicious and accidental damage.
5. Unified Experience
A data management platform with Git integration provides a unified, more streamlined user experience. Users can efficiently manage their projects without going back and forth between multiple applications and systems.
Git Integration with Astera
Astera Data Platform is an end-to-end, no-code data management platform that allows you to connect data from disparate sources. The enterprise-grade solution comes with a library of built-in transformations, native connectors, and advanced data quality features to simplify data management processes for technical and business users alike.
Astera offers seamless Git integration for version control, enabling you to easily track changes in your ETL/ELT, data integration, data warehousing, and other data management tasks.
To integrate your remote repository with Astera, you have the Clone Repository option. In contrast to other data management solutions, Astera’s Git integration allows you to choose a directory to create local repositories and store files. You can also use an existing directory if there’s already a repository cloned on your system. Additionally, you can also move a local repository to a remote server. Learn more about these processes here.
Astera’s Git integration is based on its philosophy of providing users with a truly unified, no-code experience. The intuitive, point-and-click UI allows you to seamlessly perform most Git operations, including commit, push, pull, fetch, creating and merging branches, and creating and cloning repositories without writing code.
The image below shows Astera’s UI along with a glimpse of its Git functionality.
Git integration – Git functionality in Astera’s UI
Here’s a view of all Git operations you can effortlessly perform from within Astera’s UI:
Git integration – Git operations in Astera
Perform Git Operations without Coding
With Astera’s integrated Git functionality, you can efficiently perform most Git operations using the context menu and dedicated buttons. Some of these are discussed below:
Cloning a Git Repository
Astera’s built-in Git functionality allows you to clone remote repositories within its UI. The process is straightforward and does not require a command line tool. All you need to do is provide a path to store the cloned repository, the URL to the remote repository, and the access token for authentication.
Git Fetch
Often used along with git branch, git checkout, git remote, and git reset, git fetch is used for downloading contents from the remote repository to update the local repository. Astera’s Git implementation allows you to bypass the need to use scripts for this function, as you can simply use the Fetch option.
Git Pull
The git pull command is a combination of git fetch and git merge. Performing the git pull operation first performs git fetch to download the contents from the remote repository, then runs git merge to create a new merge commit in the local branch. Instead of using a Git command line tool or Windows Command Prompt, Astera’s Git integration offers a point-and-click UI to perform this operation.
Git Commit
Whenever you modify, add, delete, or rename a file, the changes will not be visible on your repository immediately; they only exist in your local working directory. Once you stage the changes, you can save them into your repository using the git commit command. This commit, and each subsequent one, is essentially a snapshot of your repository when that commit is made, allowing you to easily track where the changes are.
With Astera’s Git functionality, you can easily stage and commit changes without worrying about scripts or command lines.
Git Push
Use the Git push function when you have committed all the changes and are ready to send them to the remote repository. Astera’s Git integration offers the flexibility to “commit and push” in one go or commit first and push later when you’re ready.
Git Merge
The merge option allows you to merge branches with a click of a button. In case of a conflict, you can preview conflicted files and decide which version you want to keep or resolve the conflict (if you already know which version you want to keep).
There are other Git operations that you can perform without using the command line tool. However, Astera’s built-in Git functionality offers you the ability to use the Windows command prompt for advanced commands if necessary.
With Git integration, Astera combines its no-code data management excellence with Git’s lightning-fast distributed version control system to provide you with the ultimate user experience, accelerating your data management projects.
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