Developer and Cloud Tools

This service is available for staff and student employees.

This training documentation is intended to provide clear standards and processes using a strategic, future-ready architecture and technology stack. Adoption will build resilience and help ITS and the University adapt to technology and industry changes.

The sections below promote advancement from beginner to professional and document many of the tools used by the ITS Enterprise Application and Cloud Development team at the University of St. Thomas.

Developers utilize many tools, frameworks, languages, and methodologies to perform tasks, create and maintain integrations, and deploy projects to the cloud. These tools are used by developers and software engineers, infrastructure and operations engineers managing cloud services, and those who run scripts to automate tasks within their department.

No matter your level of experience or job title: If you run commands in a terminal, use the "View Source" option when editing pages, use Notepad to edit scripts and code, or spend your day in an IDE, then THIS PAGE IS FOR YOU!

Table of Contents

This page often offers an outline or checklist of concepts. This is still a work in progress — if there is no link to additional information, please let us know what interests you, and we can work with you to develop documentation and/or training. You may use the feedback and comment section at the bottom of this article, or, if you have any direct feedback or contributions, please contact Chad Kluck, the DevOps and Developer Experience Engineer on the ITS Enterprise Application and Cloud Development Team.

 

Getting Started

Development Environment

To maximize support, standardization, and common tools, we utilize Linux-like development environments.

TL;DR for Dev Environments

For those needing to "just jump to it!"

Windows and Mac Installs

Configuring (Mac, Windows, Linux, UTM/WSL)

Developer Tools

Source Version Control and GIT

Basics

It is important to know the basics, so we've provided a list of common languages, frameworks, and concepts below. Documentation, resources, and tutorials for each are readily available online. Any concepts, common patterns, or recommended resources used at St. Thomas will be linked below. If a topic does not link to an article, you may do a search online for resources.

Accessibility and Usability

Knowledge Base Articles

Accessibility Training and Badges

Front End Development

Ellucian Experience Extension Development (Murphy)

Ellucian Experience Extension development uses the React framework, Ellucian modules, and custom modules and templates developed by the Enterprise Team.

Unily Development (One St. Thomas)

Unily development uses AngularJS 1.5 for "classic" components and Angular 17 for federated modules.

Cascade Development (EDU)

Cascade development utilizes Vue.js. The local development environment uses a PHP server and Twig. Deployments utilize Velocity for server-side templating.

DevOps

The St. Thomas ITS Enterprise Application and Cloud Development team practices and promotes DevOps which unifies planning, development, testing, and deployment into a continuous, collaborative loop.

Cloud Application Development Using SAM (Serverless Application Model)

Cloud Development and Infrastructure

Not only is it important to pick the right tool, but it must also be used and implemented correctly so that it is secure, reliable, maintainable, and cost-effective.

Implementing Authentication and Authorization

Implementing External Integrations

Many integrations can be achieved through the use of RESTful APIs. It is advised that a basic understanding of API requests, JSON, and Authentication methods is understood before proceeding.

Applications that utilize and aggregate external APIs should follow the development methods described for Reverse Proxy Service Development and Use at St. Thomas. Application templates, starter code, and walk-throughs are provided by St. Thomas to quickly implement production-ready integrations of these types in AWS.

When accessing data, ensure you follow all university guidelines and applicable usage agreements regarding intellectual property, request limits, data use, privacy, and security.

Professional Development

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Related Articles (10)

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