Rick Hillegas wrote: > Can someone point me at a primer which describes how developers test > soft and hard upgrade? There is some customer-oriented discussion of > upgrade in the Developer's Guide and on the Wiki (at > http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/UpgradingTen). But I can't find any > pointers on the testing web page (java/testing/README.htm). > Rick pinged me off-line and asked me to respond to this question about upgrade testing.
There are some upgrade tests checked into java/testing/org/apache/derbyTesting/upgradeTests. There is a script there that you can run easily but it is not integrated into the test suite or in the README. Doing this integration has been a long open issue: DERBY-514. Until recently it has apparently been nobody's itch to pick this item up. Deepa recently started working on it and found many diffs that have yet to be fully analyzed. Most problems seem related to the metadata based on the product regressions she has filed so far (DERBY-1124) (DERBY-1120) . I also filed (DERBY-1107) an existing problem related to changing metadata in maintenance versions. All three issues seem related to how to handle changes to the metadata queries. This is really the first significant feature release of Derby after the initial release, so really the first time ever we have to deal with upgrade and compatibility, how it works in practice or how it is tested. I think that is a collective and fairly urgent itch that needs to be scratched. I think Deepa's proposal in DERBY-1076 was good, that we first focus on getting the test running in the harness and then it will be easier for everyone to run and analyze. I think I would add that we should hold off on metadata checkins and other changes that impact upgrade until the upgrade test is working to a point that it can test for regressions and be updated to test new features. Please review Deepa's patch for DERBY-1075 to help move this effort along. Thanks Kathey
