Question: Smart ways to implement a Test Database for Production System

As I am sure is very common, our shop maintains a Test Database which has all the same structures as our Production Database, but which the developers can use to test applications.

Our database supports a Client Tracking application. For space reasons, our Test Database was set up initially to hold only a subset of the Clients in our Production Database. It is now several months after this Test Database was prepared (by our vendor) and I find myself very often wishing that the Test version of a Client's data was as up to date and detailed as the Production version.

It is a non-trivial task to re-syncrhonize the two databases, and I've been trying to come up with a clever scheme to do it simply. The basic task is to update all the related records pertaining to a Client on Test side based on the corresponding records in Production. It is the complexity of the relationships, the various constraints, and the need to copy only a subset of the Production data that makes this difficult. Our database currently has no meta-data system, excepting of course the Oracle data dictionary.

Would any of you with experience in the Test vs. Production realm care to share some of your insights and experiences? I'd be interested in elegant methodologies, useful ways to visualize this problem, or commercial utilities that provide this functionality.

Matt Marek
mmarek_at_mail.state.wi.us Received on Wed Jun 19 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST