Since someone said the magic word…
To me anyway, the Ops in DevOps is about deployment. Being able to export our objects is certainly helpful to compare versions between environments. What’s still missing from Epicor is a way to manage these custom objects. A recent feature that @hkeric.wci wrote about is the IceCommon Database. Currently, it appears to store objects by major version, but imagine that it also contained the Environment (Live, Test, Pilot, Dev, etc.) when an object is stored. Now comparing multiple versions of objects would be a snap. Storing the custom objects in a central area (in the ICECommon Database or a new ERPCommon Database) would also prevent the accidental deletion of work in progress (overwriting Pilot for example), and it may even help in a recovery scenario for a particular environment. History of deployment could be tracked as well knowing who deployed an item, which version, and when.
I’m not saying ExportAllTheThings isn’t a useful tool! But if we’re going to mention DevOps or Platform Engineering, the brass ring is still out there. 