how frequently my qa database should be synced with the dev database?

Question

Currently we are testing DB. Today I got new data base for my testing team. So, I was wondering how do I make sure that database what I have got is always in sync with database they have with development team? Data is very huge and we have million records. All are dynamic data. The end result is reports. The dev team is frequently making changes to their data base after fetching data from various source. Also, they add new stored procedures. So, how do I make sure that data I have is synced with the data what they have? What should be the right approach?

Answer 1

Usually, you can generate your own dynamic/transactional data once you know the nature of data. You always do not need to grab data from the production server.

But, you will need to have latest of store procedures and any change in entity, table structure or mapping structure.

In that case, you can set up a process that you have your own database which will get updates from the database used by the dev team. Once the changes are signed off, it will go to the production database. This is the ideal process. You can stay as a gatekeeper.

I recommend you to run bi-weekly or monthly job to fetch data from the production DB and rewrite your QA DB with that, provided there are not SP, Entity, Table structure or table mapping changes.