First Advisor

Eugster, Ernest

Second Advisor

Ina, Donald J.

College

College for Professional Studies

Degree Name

MS Software Engineering and Database Technologies

School

School of Computer & Information Science

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Number of Pages

133 pages

Abstract

Refreshing non-production database environments is a fundamental activity. A non-productive environment must closely and approximately be related to the productive system and be populated with accurate, consistent data so that the changes before moving into the production system can be tested more effectively. Also if the development system has more related scenario as that of a live system then programming in-capabilities can be minimized. These scenarios add more pressure to get the system refreshed from the production system frequently. Also many organizations need a proven and performant solution to creating or moving data into their nonproduction environments that will neither break business rules, nor expose confidential information to non-privileged contractors and employees. But the academic literature on refreshing non-production environments is weak, restricted largely to instruction steps. To correct this situation, this study examines ways to refresh the development, QA, test or stage environments with production quality data, while maintaining the original structures. Using this method, developer's and tester's releases being promoted to the production environment are not impacted after a refresh. The study includes the design, development and testing of a system which semi-automatically backs up (saves a copy of) the current database structures, then takes a clone of the production database from the reporting or Oracle Recovery Manager servers, and then reapplies the structures and obfuscates confidential data. The study used an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment for refresh. The findings identify methodologies to perform the refresh of non-production environments in a timely manager without exposing confidential data, and without over-writing the current structures in the database being refreshed. They also identify areas of significant savings in terms of time and money that can be made by keeping the structures for developers with freshened data.

Date of Award

Summer 2011

Location (Creation)

Colorado (state); Denver (county); Denver (inhabited place)

Rights Statement

All content in this Collection is owned by and subject to the exclusive control of Regis University and the authors of the materials. It is available only for research purposes and may not be used in violation of copyright laws or for unlawful purposes. The materials may not be downloaded in whole or in part without permission of the copyright holder or as otherwise authorized in the “fair use” standards of the U.S. copyright laws and regulations.

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