Refreshing DEV environment with PROD Data.

[former_member431412]

We asked our Basis administrators about copying produciton to DEV. We were told that refreshing dev with a copy of Prod is not a good idea. If we do our development and save to local objects, what are the downfalls to Refreshing DEV with a copy of PROD.

We want to Refresh because our DEV environement is lacking a large amount if data that willl make it easier for us to test our changes in DEV.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

[Former Member]

Terrible idea....makes a HUGE, SLOW development box. Develop necessary test data in DEV, manually or with industry-known tools. If you have to have a full copy of PROD for test, refresh QA with PROD copy periodically.

[former_member431412]

We are a fairly small shop with only six developers so I am not sure that a slow environment would affect us much. you mentioned industry know tools. Are there tools that allow us to copy some master data while clearing others. For instance, don't copy order data but do copy functional locations, WBS, costing sheets, and other data that is required to support normal order creation?

[Former Member]

The main problem is that you lose all version management.

Rob

[brad_bohn]

It's not something normally done. Typically, you refresh your QA/TEST environment with a PROD client copy and refresh your DEV sandbox with a config copy from your DEV config master client. This preserves the integrity of your DEV environment. If your config is transported correctly and you have ALE distribution set up for master data and changes, this should give you enough of a platform for unit testing. It also forces less knowledgable developers to learn how to create transaction data to support their developments (unless of course you ask the functional folks to do it).

Anyway, most DEV boxes I've seen aren't sized to hold PROD data. Is yours?

[former_member431412]

Based on todays size, the answer is yes, it is big enough.

[Former Member]

>

> It's not something normally done.  Typically, you ... refresh your DEV sandbox with a config copy from your DEV config master client.

What becomes of version management in this case?

Rob

[brad_bohn]

It's retained. The only time (that I know of) where the Basis folks have had to intervene with version management was on the upgrade to 7.0; I believe one of the steps was a version management export to a file and then a re-import after the upgrade. We have not done a sandbox refresh here in quite some time though and certainly not since the 7.0 upgrade.