• Registered: 09/24/2012
  • Posts: 10

Topic: Refreshes and dev/test/prod layout

Hi All,

I'm playing with FA in a sandbox and want to begin building out my company in a development environment. It's obvious I'm going to want to have multiple instances: TEST/DEV/TRAIN/QA/PROD but not clear what the best practice would be. On the one hand I could make them all separate companies in the same database. Alternatively I could make each one a separate install with a separate database. I'm leaning heavily toward separate installs and databases.

One of the biggest issues I can foresee is going to be refreshes. Copying PROD to TRAIN for example so I can train people on real production data in a safe environment. Is the refresh procedure documented? If they are separate databases can I just export PROD, import into TRAIN and rename the company, change passwords, etc? If they are in the same database, could I write a script to export all the "1_%" tables and re-import them as "2_%" table names for example to have company 1 refreshed onto company 2?

Thanks in advance for the help, great product here and looking forward to playing with it and hopefully going live.

Best regards,

David

  • joe
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 03/15/2007
  • Posts: 5,106

Re: Refreshes and dev/test/prod layout

You can use the backup / restore mechanism, but as you describe: It is important to rename the table profixes before restoring. But you cannot do this, if the receiving company is operated by other users during these operations!

Remember you are very much your own here, so be carefull. Of course you can always restore the initial backup if something goes wrong.

/Joe

  • Registered: 09/24/2012
  • Posts: 10

Re: Refreshes and dev/test/prod layout

Hi Joe,

Thanks for writing back. I actually was discussing two different options and am not sure which one you are recommending. It seems you might be recommending that I keep all of these different instances in the same database but I'm still leaning towards having a separate databse / application directory for each instance unless I'm pushed otherwise. Can you clarify?

Reasons I'm considering a separate database / application directory for each instance:

- can upgrade application directory to new version and test without affecting production
- can control with the URL which system users log into, makes it easier to control access

It looks like I can just export / import the whole database and copy the contents of the company/0 directory structure and it will bring the whole FA instance over when doing a refresh. Am I missing anything?

And your warning that I am "very much on my own" is a bit ominous. I do want to do refreshes in a way that is a best practice and can at least ask in the forums and hope somebody answers.

Thanks again,

David