Best practice for CE9 staging environment 2

[DanMcG]

I was wondering what the recommended way of creating a staging (test/unit/model/prod) environment in crystal enterprise is. Separate APS databases? Separate folder structure(s) within a single APS database? Or something else? I can't find any guidance on the Business Objects website.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Not sure what you mean, but the 'Infrastructure' part of Crystal Enterprise usually does not need to be set up in a staged architecture environment.
Once it is installed and running, the decisions are more about organizing folders, authorization methods, user interface, etc. then changes to the underlying structure.
( Not to mention the expense involved in multiple CE licenses).
There are some white papers on insuring high-availability ( they were issued for 8.5 but apply to 9 and 10 as well) on the BO support site - search for 'High Availability' - these involve using multiple servers for the various CE services or clustering servers for fail-over and load balancing use.
We do have 2 separate CE systems ( one for Development and one for Production) but this is just to prevent new reports/web pages/csp code that may be badly designed from slowing down the production site..

If I'm missing what you want to do, post more info and I'll try to be more helpful..

 

[DanMcG]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply. So, you have separated development and production reports by putting them in different Enterprise instances or APS databases. We typically have 3 or 4 different staging levels. Development, testing, user acceptance testing, and production. It would be nice if Business Objects had a white paper on the topic rather than letting the customer figure out a solution that works. I their product is installed in medium to large corporations, then I'm sure the question has been raised before.

Dan

 

[rhinok]

I think it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're concerned about the integrity and/or configuration of your CE environment, then it makes sense to have at least two environments (Testing and Production). This way you could test configuration changes, apply patches, etc... to the Testing environment.

When it comes to testing reports, you have a few options with CE9. You could create separate folders, which are secured to specific groups (Developers, Testers, UAT, Production Users). Once a report is ready for migration to the next level, you can simply move it from one folder to the next (or back, if necessary).

One caveat to this approach is that you will probably need multiple ODBC DSNs if the iterations of the report touch different databases (in line with your development model of Dev, Test, UAT and Production). With CE9, this means a Report Developer will need to open the CE Report from CR and Set Location to the new DSN and Save the report prior to moving it to its new home. CE10 eliminates this step, because it allows you to select the DSN from the CMC.

Another option for CE9 is to have multiple CE environments, each of which has the exact same DSN Names (case-sensitive for CE), but which point to their respective databases. The same printers (including the default) should also be configured in each environment. The benefit here is that a report could be moved from one environment to the next (or back to the previous) without having to open the report and change the DSN. Migration is fairly seamless, except for the high overhead of having multiple environments.

I would recommend upgrading to CE10 in order to take advantage of the ability to select the Datasource within the CMC (among other features). This means that all of your reports iterations could reside on the same server, but in different secure folders. Furthermore, I would recommend having a second server available that has the exact same configuration (not necessarily hardware) as the first. The second server doesn't have to be running all the time, but it should be available for testing any changes that could affect CE.


~Kurt

 

[DanMcG]

Crystal Enterprise 9 has a 'Database' tab for each report where you can specify the datasource for the report. Isn't that the feature you are describing in CE10?

 

[rhinok]

You're correct. I was thinking of CE 8.5, which also has a database tab, but doesn't allow you to specify the datasource.

In that case, I modify my recommendation to be:

I recommend using separate secure folders for each 'environment', taking advantage of the ability to set the database location from within the CMC (using unique DSNs for each 'environment'. Furthermore, I would recommend having a second server available that has the exact same configuration (not necessarily hardware) as the first. The second server doesn't have to be running all the time, but it should be available for testing any changes that could affect CE.


~Kurt