more of a thought question

[JohnE]

Hello. This post is more of a thought type posting to see what and how
others manage a webapp that needs to be connected to the production db, a
clone db for training, a clone for development, a clone for testing, you get
the idea here. What concerns me is someone might think they are on the
training db but actually on the production db. My first thought is to have
some type of display in the header of the masterpage indicating which db the
user is connected to (other then the production). Most, if not all of the
above variations would be set up by someone in IT (most likely me). But I
want the visual confirmation to be seen. I am a greenhorn, rookie, newbie,
(feel free to add your own word in there) when it comes to this.

What and how do others out in ASP.Net land manage something like this?
Gimme your thoughts, ideas, what to watch out for, gotchas, and so on.

Thanks for the feedback.
.... John

 

[rodchar]

That's a great idea. And if you don't want it to be obtrusive at all create
an enter page that has that information on it before they enter the app.

rod.

 

[Andy O'Neill]

Hello. This post is more of a thought type posting to see what and how
others manage a webapp that needs to be connected to the production db, a
clone db for training, a clone for development, a clone for testing, you
get
the idea here. What concerns me is someone might think they are on the
training db but actually on the production db. My first thought is to
have
some type of display in the header of the masterpage indicating which db
the
user is connected to (other then the production). Most, if not all of the
above variations would be set up by someone in IT (most likely me). But I
want the visual confirmation to be seen. I am a greenhorn, rookie,
newbie,
(feel free to add your own word in there) when it comes to this.

What and how do others out in ASP.Net land manage something like this?
Gimme your thoughts, ideas, what to watch out for, gotchas, and so on.

Thanks for the feedback.
... John

You want a big obvious header that's onevery non-live page and you can
point at when someone asks why sales are down this month.
Because that's the sort of mix up which inevitable happens.

You need separate sites and at least the live application should be on a
different server completely.
Control which database to connect to through web config,
When you stuff up and copy one config file over another then when you run
the thing it will be very obvious you are about to over-write live data.
Plus of course each and every time you do such a copy you will run it
straight away to make sure you got it right.
If your application is used by a lot of people and you could possibly find
someone is about to start testing at the moment you copy a new version over
then you need a mechanism to disable the application temporarilly, except
for developers. That way you can test before the latest training starts and
your live data is overwritten by the trainees.