What is Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)?

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is fundamentally a practice that automates various stages of the software development lifecycle. It encompasses a set of processes aimed at enhancing the efficiency and reliability of software delivery. By implementing CI/CD, teams can integrate code changes regularly and deploy them swiftly to production environments, minimizing the risks associated with changes and ensuring that new features and fixes can be released more frequently and seamlessly.

The automation provided by CI/CD allows for repetitive tasks, such as building, testing, and deploying code, to be handled by tools and platforms. This greatly reduces the potential for human error, improves consistency in deployments, and accelerates the development process. Therefore, the practice encapsulates the essence of building better software through automated pipelines that can help teams respond quickly to changes and feedback.

The other options do not align with the concept of CI/CD. A manual testing process does not utilize automation and contrasts with the continuous nature of CI/CD. A specific programming language is unrelated to the CI/CD methodology as it pertains to how software is developed rather than how it is delivered. Similarly, a type of database management is not relevant to the CI/CD framework, which focuses on the automation of software integration and delivery rather than on data storage or management systems.