[thelist] Testing a Webapp

[Joel D Canfield]

> Create your dummy user(s) and data on a test version of the 
> application. Bugfix on the test version (if you absolutely 
> have to) and, once you're happy,  recreate the database on 
> test from the live server db content and structure. This 
> automatically gives you a test db identical to live and also 
> gets rid of all your junky test data.

last company I worked at, we lived, day in and day out, in a custom web
app. besides multiple test environs, we had a full-blown mirror of
production, as suggested here, and did final testing there. the only
failures were when either 1) someone failed to ensure true identicality
or 2) a live scenario came up which wasn't accounted for in staging

expensive, in both time and hardware/software/etc., but critical to the
business function.