On Mon, 2010-06-21 at 17:09 -0700, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote: > Hi All, > > I posted info about this idea and got a big 'ol nothing in response so > I wanted to try one more time to verify that it really is of no > interest to anyone.
It is of interest, I just have a slight variation on your suggestion which really hearkens back to a suggestion I pitched many moons ago. (I think the first time might have been http://markmail.org/message/dbwre7cqhmmnnlrv but I know I've discussed it in several other forums since then...) > Here's the idea....as one of the RSCEL projects, were thinking of > setting up a training server which would have a current version of > Evergreen loaded, would be accessible to anyone (much like the demo > servers) but we'd make sure we kept it totally current with one > matching client software download. > > > We'd also keep data in there that you could rely on being there for > training (so we'd have to refresh it on some regular basis). > Eventually, we'd contribute some exercises that people could use in > their training which would use that training server and data. > > > The idea is that you would then not have to worry about how to train > your people on your own Evergreen server at the same time you were > trying to get ready to go live. > > > Also, by sharing the same data and server set-up, we could all > contribute training exercises. > > > So, if you think this would be useful or you think it would be a waste > of time...please advise. Friendly amendments are also encouraged. We > want to do something that helps people so if this wouldn't help > anyone, we RSCELs will focus our attention somewhere else! > Rather than having this data sitting just on a training server RSCEL, I think it would be much more useful to have the sample data sets available as part of the Evergreen source. This would enable every Evergreen install to (optionally) have a reference set of data to work with locally. We could build documentation / training based on those sample sets of data, but also build tests on those sample sets of data to ensure that the SQL schema hasn't been broken & the data can actually load, a given server is working as expected, and that a given report returns the expected results, and that a given API call generates the expected effects. This could also be a useful basis on which to build tests of the migration scripts. I do think that having an up-to-date training server always at the ready would be a valuable thing and support that goal; I just think that it's potentially more important to have a canonical set of sample data available as part of the Evergreen source.
