The following examples are factors that could cause test environments to behave differently from production environments:
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Hardware in test environments is typically older, less powerful, or virtualized differently.
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Hardware drivers are often at different levels, even if the hardware is identical.
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Installed versions and patches for operating systems, browsers, database servers, and other software components are often different.
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Differences in environments may inhibit the detection of software interference because some software, such as anti-virus programs and local security policies that may exist in production, is not always installed in the test environment.
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ODBC driver versions may be different in testing environments. ODBC drivers should always match the target database server, and they should generally be patched to the latest stable version.
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Test machines might be on another domain, which could have different security configuration and published applications.
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Other systems that coordinate with OnBase might be tested in another environment, or they may be testing versions that do not respond the same way as the full version might respond in production.
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Shared equipment in production may create a very different environment than the test environment provides. The impact of other applications in production may not be testable. For example, database input/output (I/O) impact of other shared systems may differ between production and test environments.
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Different backup processes may be used. Most test environments do not have a backup process implemented. This fails to address any impacts that occur when the backup is initiated.
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Supporting technology such as network equipment and storage appliances are different and can be loaded differently. Varying latencies, saturation points and irregular demands will occur in production.
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Time-based anomalies with the network, system software, and other systems often differ between production and test environments.
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Other people could be testing or changing things in the same environment.
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Test systems often do not have the hardware to replicate the complete production environment, so sometimes this prevents observations of issues related to the size of the database, the number of users, and the amount of transactions occurring at once. Some obscure issues may occur only with the precise timing of certain events, which is much more likely to happen with the increased workload in production.