QA environment data refresh strategy

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QA environment data refresh strategy

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Christopher Favero Old Hand Points: 349 More actions · Answer 1

I have a similar situation but it has another layer of complexity... any thoughts on how to refresh QA data with the following:

each QA person need a specific login ID to test against. the idea is that we would grab all related data for the specific ID and bring it down to an empty QA db. It has been proposed that each QA person gets their own local environment. I woudl rather keep their ID's all in one instance.

here is where it gets seriously crazy for us...

after a time a single QA analyst would need to refresh the data back to the baseline. not everyone but just this one QA person.

thoughts on how I could accomplish this? we are looking at these ID's in over 7 databases and inside those db's there are 100's of tables.

any guidance would be appreciated.

Yelena Varshal SSC-Dedicated Points: 34286 More actions · Answer 2

All changes have to be tested together. There has to be only one QA environment for all who use it. It is called Integration Testing. And we are talking about both DATA and CODE changes.

Regards,Yelena Varsha

Christopher Favero Old Hand Points: 349 More actions · Answer 3

I have the director of QA asking for this "golden copy" of data that they wish to test against and then revert back after testing.

is this a possibility if some QA is working on one project and another QA analyst is on another project when QA analyst #1 is done early and needs their data "reset" how can I accomplish this easily?

Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 4

Christopher Favero (7/7/2008)
I have the director of QA asking for this "golden copy" of data that they wish to test against and then revert back after testing.
is this a possibility if some QA is working on one project and another QA analyst is on another project when QA analyst #1 is done early and needs their data "reset" how can I accomplish this easily?

Snapshots, multiple copies of databases (a pain to have to adjust applications), or multiple instances ... any of these should accomplish that.

Christopher Favero Old Hand Points: 349 More actions · Answer 5

cant easily do snapshots or copies as the data size of some of ourt dbs are over 300GB. with 1000's of Id's we would need 3 or 4 levels deep of data for one ID which is alot less than the 300Gb.

and we woudl need this for all related and shared db's

Johan Bijnens SSC Guru Points: 135369 More actions · Answer 6

It's been a while, but I've seen a solution for mainframe db2 where you could prepare a full set of (related) data to be loaded into an environment.

I cannot recall its name, but I can recall its pain.

First of all, setting up the baseline data is a drudgery.

The huge problem with this is maintenance. As systems (schema) grow and is being modified, this also needs to be reflected to your baseline data.

On top of the user related data, there is always a reporting part that uses all data in your database or tables. There also is a big caveot !!

Back in the days, there was a dedicated team for this.

After the test period of this, they switched back to one QA for all, timed and coordinated by a QA-team.

This QA was set up with a full copy of the production data, lived with the rules for production data (security,..).

Johan

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Adam Bean One Orange Chip Points: 26631 More actions · Answer 7

Christopher Favero (7/7/2008)
cant easily do snapshots or copies as the data size of some of ourt dbs are over 300GB. with 1000's of Id's we would need 3 or 4 levels deep of data for one ID which is alot less than the 300Gb.
and we woudl need this for all related and shared db's

Snapshots are sparse files though.

Christopher Favero Old Hand Points: 349 More actions · Answer 8

True, but I forgot to add that by virtue of qa testing the application data will change and snapshots are readonly.

I am trying to explain that the complexity of doing this with a subset of data is starting to get out of control.

We have a very shared database architecture with one main db being the "1 db to rule them all" db 😉 in total 14 db's with a grand total of 1 TB of data. And all are interdependent as our apps are rife with cross db joins.

I hope this is readable as I am typing this on my crackberry.