[thelist] Testing a Webapp

[Ken Snyder]

Hershel,

I find it helpful to set up a "Staging" environment which is identical 
to the production environment.  If appropriate, you may also want to 
copy real data from a production environment to the staging 
environment.  Often the Beta environment is the staging environment.  So 
you might have 3 environments:

Development (Alpha) - Local server of any specs
Staging (Beta) - Identical to a production server specs
Production - client servers

It seems best to avoid generating test data in a live database if at all 
possible.

Ken Snyder


Hershel Robinson wrote:
> 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
>
>