Re: Copy to Test Environment (was: BPCS Business Rules)

Dear All,

As a representative of a vendor who sells Automated Testing Solutions, I
will get that bit out at the start!

As part of our solution range we have a product that will extract data from
the live database for testing purposes.

Of course for a large amount of testing you don't ACTUALLY NEED a full
replicate copy of the production database - size isn't always everything!!

So there are the options to reduce the size of the test database but still
extract data that is relevant to testing.  You can also use the same process
to archive un-needed old data.

Other options - data scrambling - to avoid confliction with data protection
legislation and also the ability to roll back in seconds to a check points
during testing to avoid the need to restore back up copies of the data. 

Test data SHOULD be a representation of the live database - otherwise are
you not comparing two different sets of scenarios and making the tests
invalid?  However by scrambling the data within the fields the test data
will be different AND the same!! 

End of sale pitch and please contact me offline if there are any further
questions.

Jamie 

Jamie Coles
Original Software
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(US) +1 630 321 0092
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Definitive Software Testing.
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-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces+jamie.coles=origsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bpcs-l-bounces+jamie.coles=origsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Al Mac
Sent: 27 November 2006 16:43
To: SSA's BPCS ERP System
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] Copy to Test Environment (was: BPCS Business Rules)

I assume you are not answering my question, instead asking a separate one, 
since repopulation of a test environment is separate issue than my question 
about reverse engineering where Gen Led gets rules on which accounts to 
populate.

BPCSDOC came with some instructions for test environments which I found to 
be inadequate.  We have logicals in different libraries from their 
physicals & when we followed SSA's instructions we ended up with logicals 
in one environment pointing at logicals in another.

At some historical past point, all files in Live were also defined in Test, 
then over time various modifications added new stuff to Live and neglected 
to replicate in Test, so if you not repopulated Test in a while, you need 
to take an inventory of what is defined in Live that aint defined in 
Test.  This also applies to software modifications.  Also the procedure 
will vary by BPCS version.

Test software should not be an exact replica of Live, so that when people 
sign on either, it is pretty obvious you in TEST vs. LIVE environment, to 
avoid people getting confused, keying garbage into LIVE or spend days 
keying production data into TEST.

Aside from those OS hassles, there has been a revolution in computer 
security.  It is no longer acceptable to have private sensitive data in a 
test, because software testing and user education is more likely to have a 
breach than the live area, so even more important not to copy stuff you not 
want in a news media circus when you have to report what got 
breached.  Several good iSeries articles on facing this challenge are 
linked from this one.
http://www.itjungle.com/fhg/fhg110806-story03.html

Hi All,

Does Anybody has a proper procedure while doing System Refresh (Copying of
the data from Production Environment to Test Environment).

I need to do that so that nothing is left out while doing the same.

Thanks,
vishu

<snip> confidentiality statement that is irrelevant to a public discussion 
forum.