[thelist] Testing a Webapp

[Hershel Robinson]

Let's say that we have a webapp in place. It's live and customers and 
staff are using it happily.

We now want to test certain features, either due to a bug report or due 
to a suspicion we may have of a bug. Note that of course we have a Beta 
and an Alpha version which are completely independent and we can test 
there, but at some point, we will also want to test on the live site, 
because there is no replacement for the real thing. :)

Let's now say that the activity which we want to test generates an email 
and also lots of data in the DB. We don't want that email to go to 
anyone aside from us so of course we can make a new User record with our 
email address and then run whatever activities we want.

The only problem with that is that it generates a LOT of false data--we 
now have a false User, a false order, false site activity, a false 
commission to the Sales Agent etc. We could of course just go and erase 
all this data by hand, but a more elegant solution would certainly be 
preferable.

One suggestion we have is to label this special User as having a unique 
status of TEST USER. Then all data he generates can also be labeled 
using unique TEST statii. We will probably in truth need a set of test 
Users, each to test various parameters and internal relationships.

This is my present approach. Anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks,
Hershel

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