The Testing Environment - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 153

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File systems
Databases
Connectivity (LANs, WANs, Satellite, Wireless, and Internet)

Finally, you will need to seek test data experts for three reasons. The fi rst reason is
that you will need to fi nd the best possible test data sources to represent expected
production data. The second reason is that you will need to determine how best to
load that test data into the test environment as a testing starting point. The third
reason is that you will need to determine how best to reload that test data for reruns
once a series of tests has been executed, regardless of whether the tests were success-
ful. Examples of groups that you might contact for test data help include experienced
end-users, senior developers, database administrators, and operations management.
The way you load and reload test data in the test environment seldom refl ects
the production backup and recovery strategy for the application under test. Produc-
tion backup and recovery serve an entirely different purpose for the application in
production, namely business continuity. Recall from Chapter 8 that there are testing
techniques specifi cally for backup and recovery.
It is common to fi nd multiple testing environments in many development shops.
The fi rst and most common testing environment you will fi nd is the developer environ-
ment itself that may not be considered a true testing environment. Recall the white box
testing discussion in Chapter 7. This kind of testing must be performed by the devel-
oper because the tester rarely has access to the source code under construction. Quite
naturally, the developer completes white box testing in the same environment in which
he or she does development. The observation is made to differentiate code debugging
from testing but does not add any further value to the discussion of test environments.
The next kind of testing environment you may fi nd is called a “staging” environ-
ment or a “migration” environment or a “deployment” environment. The developers
see this environment as the next place their programs go prior to “going live.” It repre-
sents the collection point over time of all fi nished programming. It also represents an
excellent testing environment for the fi nished programming both as the fi nished com-
ponents become available and as the application itself becomes complete. Figure 10.1
illustrates what a simple computing environment strategy such as this might look like.

Development
environment

Staging (t est)
environment

Production
environment

Version 1

Next version

Next version

Untested
and
corrected
software

Te ste d
software
only

Version 2

Version 3

Figure 10.1

Simple computing environment strategy