Our team (QA) is facing the following problem:
We have a database that is accessed only by our Core application which is a WCF services app. Our client applications are using the Core to access the database.
At some point we were provided with a new Version of our Core application and of our Database. The Dev department also gave us a sql script which is altering a big part of our database Core data. The core data are used by the Core Application to describe the Logic of our system, so every change on that data may have affects on any of our client application's functionality.
My questions are:
Should we test all of our applications again (even if they are
already fully tested) or is there is a more efficient way to test the
SQL script?
Is there a testing technique/tool for data integrity/migration testing?
I am looking for a quick validity/integrity testing of the database after running a migration script. That will prevent us losing time by testing it through the applications. If the validity/integrity testing is successful then we can test the apps.
There are unit testing frameworks available for T-SQL. The TSQLUnit project is one such framework. You can use it to set up automated testing, just like you would in the applications.
as #Tim Lentine already posted, I would recomend testing the full application. As you commented, the new sql script your team received has made important changes on the core of your database development, according to your description, both on the structure and the data itself. So in order to be sure that everything is still on one piece I would preferably do a full application test. As for a tool or technique I can recomend the new RedGate (no, I do not work for them) addon on the SSMS called "SQL Test". It uses the unit testing open source tSQLt for its purposes. It only has the drawback that someone will need to first learn how to work with tSQLt but is prettu straightforward.
From the description you gave:
We have a database that is accessed only by our Core application ...
we were provided with a new Version of our Core application and of
our Database ...
tells me it is not your team's responsibility to test the database in isolation, but you can test the Core service from your client's perspective and therefore assume the database is correct.
Treat the Core application and the database as a black box and test using Unit Tests. These test should not require you to go poking around in the database as for all intents and purposes any application using your Core application doesn't know, nor should care, that the information is actually stored in to a database. You development team could decide in 6 months they are going to store the data in the Cloud in which case all your database test will be broken.
If you do have to look in the database to check data has been stored correctly then there is a problem with your Core service's interface as any data you put in should be retrievable via the same interface (I just know someone is going to comment that their app does store data which cannot be read back but without a more detailed description of your app it's easier to generalise).
Back in the real world I am assuming you are part of the QA team and unless the database developers are doing some testing (they are, aren't they?) you are more than likely going to have to validate the database changes.
To the end you may be interested to read a question I posted on the DBA Stack Exchage site about performing a data comparison between two different schemas. Spoiler: there's no easy answer.
show below links :
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/sql-server-unit-testing-with-tsqlt/
http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/
Related
I'm required to create a bit of software for a company, to illustrate my code use. I'm using .NET CORE Web App MVC and I believe it requires me to use a database but I would need to upload my code on GitHub for them to inspect and run but obviously wouldn't read the database from my machine. What are the alternatives? Can a fake DB be created within the project for instance? Or is there something else I could do that doesn't involve Azure?
I tried scaffolding a DBContext from a controller but it requires a connection of a database
Have you considered mocking your data connection? It is the same thing you would do if you were unit testing your application. You would not want to connect directly to your database; instead, you would create a mock connection and return the data yourself.
You have multiple choices here. You can use a Mock framework like Moq, FakeItEasy, JustMock, and NSubstitute. Otherwise, you can roll your own.
I have been hurting a wall for quite a while now, I am making an application linked to a software that we are using, which will allow the user to either access data from the software with my application and update data with my application on the software.
So here is the whole idea:
So my app will be linked to the software's database (Software Patient) with the help of foreign key (patientId on "App Patient").
And I need to be able to search for email, password, firstName, lastName, secretStuff directly from my app and be able to update data as well on both databases.
The biggest issue here is that I can't make a third table that merge all the data into one because the data from the software's database (Software Patient) will be updated quite a lot directly from the software by others people.
The current stack is composed of :
My application: Node.js with Sequelize, GraphQL & PostgreSQL
Software that we use: SQL Server Express
Thank you in advance!
The app you are developing must get data from your commercial Software Patient (we'll call it SP) system. That presents several questions. You really really need clear answers to these questions to finish designing the data flow in your app. Some of the questions:
How will your app get data from SP? Will you issue SQL queries to SP's database? Does SP publish an Application Programmer Interface (API) for this purpose? Or a data export function you'll use in you app's workflow?
Must your app's view of SP data be up-to-the-minute? Will an hourly update be enough? Daily?
Will your app change SP data, insert new data, or delete data in the SP system? If so see the first question.
Must you reverse-engineer SP, that is, guess how its data is structured, to make your app work? Or can you get specs / documentation from SP's developers?
If you update a reverse-engineered database, dude, be careful!
If your app will use SQL to get data from SP, it will send that SQL to SP's SQL Server Express database. nodejs has tooling for that, but both the tooling and the SQL dialect used in postgreSQL are different. Maybe it would be wise to use SQL Server throughout: doing so reduces the cognitive load on people who will maintain and enhance your app in the future. Neither they nor you will have to keep straight the differences between the two DBMSs.
If you'll use an API, great! That's a clean interface between two systems. (It will probably have some irritating and confusing bugs, so allow some time for that. I've had to send pull requests to several API maintainers.)
If you figure out the answers to these sorts of questions, you'll make a good decision about your question of the third table. It's impossible to address your specific third-table question without some of these questions.
And. Please. Don't forget infosec. You have a duty to keep personal data of the patients you serve away from cybercreeps.
I have an ASP.NET Web Application that is connected to a Database that is installed in several clients in production environment.
Some of those clients manage critical information (in other schemas, not accesible for the Web App, like people's money) so the access to execute scripts directly in the database to fix things in my Web App, if it's needed, requires time and also approbation, sometimes it takes weeks..
As some of my clients have a volatile reallity, my Web App has to manage a lot of changes in some short periods of time, that means script executions in the database to alter data or schema, and that means time waste !
Long story short, my question is, is it a good practice to implement a page, only for administrator users, that executes a raw query directly to database?
Think in the scenario where security issue is managed properly.
Something like: Sql Pad where you cannot see the entire database system, just the query and the result as the target database is only one.
No. It's a terrible idea. The security issue is probably not manageable - a web page that's available on the public internet which grants schema modification rights to the logged in user is a horrible security risk. Even if you can't get to another schema, you can easily bring the server to its knees by writing simple SQL which consumers all CPU, memory or disk space.
It's also terrible because you lose any track of what changes were installed in which environment.
If the IT department won't approve your scripts when run from management studio they certainly won't let you loose on your own via a web interface.
I've always solved this problem via automated deployment scripts - execute the schema changes etc. as a part of installing the new version of the web application. That way, you can do things like back up the database before running your changes, keep track of versioning and control access.
Today I maintain project that has really messy DB that need a lot of refactor and publish on clients machines.
I know that I could add a SQL Server Database project that contains just scripts of the database and creates a .dacpac file that allows me to change clients databases automatically.
Also I know that I could just add an .mdf file to the App_Data or even to Solution_Data folder and have my database there. I suppose that localDb that already exists allows me to startup my solution without SQL Server
And atlast i know that Entity Framework exist with it's own migrations. But i don't want to use it, besouse i can't add and change indexes with it's migrations and i don't have anought flexibility when i need to describe difficult migrations scenarios.
My goals:
Generate migration scripts to clients DB's automaticaly.
Make my solution self-contained, that any new Programmer that came to project don't even need to install SQL Server on his machine.
Be able to update local (development) base in 1-2 clicks.
Be able to move back in history of db changes (I have TFS server)
Be able to have clean (only with dictionaries or lookup tables) db in solution with up to date DB scheme.
Additionally i want to be able to update my DB model (EF or .dbml) automatically or very easy way.
So what I what to ask:
What's a strengths and weaknesses of using this 2 approaches if I want to achive my goals?
Can be that I should use sort of combination of this tools?
Or don't I know about other existing tool from MS?
Is there a way to update my DAL model from this DB?
What's a strengths and weaknesses of using this 2 approaches if I want to achive my goals?
Using a database project allows you to version control all of the database objects. You can publish to various database instances and roll out changes incrementally, rather than having to drop and recreate the database, thus preserving data. These changes can be in the form of a dacpac, a SQL script, or done right through the VS interface. You gain a lot of control over deployments using pre- and post-deployment scripts and publishing profiles. Developers will be required to install SQL Server (the developer/express edition is usually good enough).
LocalDB is a little easier to work with -- you can make your changes directly in the database without having to publish. LocalDB doesn't have a built-in publish process for pushing changes to other instances. No SQL Server installation required.
Use a database project if you need version control for your database objects, if you have multiple users concurrently making changes, or if you have multiple applications that use the same database. Use LocalDB if none of those conditions apply or for small apps that require their own standalone database.
Can be that I should use sort of combination of this tools?
Yes. According to Kevin's comment below, "If the Database Project is set as your startup project, hitting F5 will automatically deploy it to LocalDB. You don't even need a publish profile in this case."
Or don't I know about other existing tool from MS?
Entity Framework's Code First approach comes close.
Is there a way to update my DAL model from this DB?
Entity Framework's POCO generator works well unless you make changes to your DAL classes, then those changes get lost the next time you run the generator.
There is a new tool called SqlSharpener which can generate classes from the SQL files in a database project. I have not used it so I cannot vouch for it but it looks promising.
One way for generating client script for DB changes is to use database modeling tool like ERWin Which have a free community edition. The best way to meet your database version control requirement and easy script generation is Redgate SQL Source Control. Using Redgate tool you will meet the first five goals mentioned. Moreover, you can now update EF Model by single click after changing DB schema (i.e. Database first approach) as required in goal 6.
I do not recommend using LocalDB at all. It always make issues with source control like "DB File is in use and can't commit...” In addition, the developer in the project will not have common set of updated data to work on unless a developer add test data to the database and ask others to get latest version and overwrite their own database Or generate update script by the previous mentioned tool and ask every developer to run it on his localDB.
The best way in your situation is to use SQL Server on network. A master version that all the developers use. Since you have version control on the database using previously mentioned tool, you can rollback any buggy change in the database server.
If you think that RedGate tool is expensive for the budget of your project. A second approach is to generate single SQL file from your database that has all database object and the other developers update the SQL file in source control per their changes. This can be done easily by using schema compare tool in visual studio and appending the generated script to SQL file in the source control. With EF DB First approach, you will not have to add many migration classes as in EF Code first.
I am developing a framework for various in-house CRUD apps. I've considered several MS technologies (WPF, Access, WinForms, ASP.NET) and have settled on ASP.NET MVC with HTA+Jquery for the client. My reason for doing so is that I need a way to write and deploy quick one-off GUI apps as well as maintaining more robust apps that are expected to have a long life time.
Firstly, I would appreciate some thoughts on the relative merits of using ADODB on the client side versus ADO.NET on the server side. I'm leaning towards ADODB since I'll have client side access to the SQL Server (I've already written a js library that handles interacting with ADODB). However, I can see how developing a RESTful service may eventually be useful.
Secondly, I need to incorporate reporting capability into the system. I can use SQL Server reporting services or crystal reports but the users have grown accustomed to some older applications that use VBA to write reports in Word; so I'm considering using WordML to write the reports.
Thanks.
Database Access
If you need a thin client, then it's probably better to stay away from directly accessing the database from within the client.
The main issue is that you will introduce a high dependency on a specific network architecture and both your ASP.Net application and the HTA will be highly dependent on the database.
Instead I would prefer to sever the dependency on direct line of sight to the DB and have the data to be handled by the server.
This has a few advantages:
for many small changes to the db, you're probably only going to have to update the ASP app.
if you ever need your client app to be functional over the internet (say because some users are going to an outside meeting, need to work from work or your company open a new branch) then you won't have to rewrite your thin client.
you keep better control over access to the resources: only let the ASP app talk to the database and filter what comes in/out of it.
This will saves you having to implement all security on the client: the ASP app becomes the guardian of the database. It's a much better way to secure information and it gives you a lot more control.
Reporting
For reporting I'd use the server again rather than implement complex reporting capabilities in the client itself.
The problem is that you'll always going to get limited on the client if you're using an HTA and don't want to start having to install dependencies on each user's machine.
You'll end-up building a thick client in no time...
If you're using ASP.Net there are plenty of really good reporting tools that will make your life much easier and allow your users to get nice reports in Excel, Word, PDF, etc without you having to code these features yourself.
Crystal Reports is ok, but there are better and simpler alternatives, for example the Developer Express Report engine is pretty easy to use.