Hello All,
Does anyone have a link or instructions on how to create a test database for our company? Currently our implementer does this for us but I would like to start doing. I believe I need to export the current database, rename it, and import it. However, I am not sure how to do this.
Links to resources for the process would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Welcome to DUG!!!
First You need to have seperate test server machine whereing all the necessary software have been installed
Then you need to take full backup of current navision (either *.fbk or *.bak) database and restore it on the test server this will give you your test database.
Hi Aaron,
Amol is correct. But if you’re running NAV 2013 or NAV 2009 RTC (you should ALWAYS write which version your questions are about) then you also need to setup another NAV server instance.
Thanks for your quick responses.
Interesting that you say we need another server for a test database. Our implementer has been putting them on our live system since inception and we have had no problems.
Perhaps I am wording it incorrectly. We have 3 databases on our NAV server; Test, Live, and Dev. Live has one company database, Dev has 2 dev companies and Test has 6 companies. I want to create a new company in Test that is the most recent copy of our Live company.
Our version is 2009 R2- 6.00.32012
Hi Aaron,
Well if you’re running the RoleTailored Client (RTC) then each database needs a NAV Server. But unless you have a lot of uses and you’re already experiencing performance problems, then you would typically use the same server. The RTC is a three tier setup, which means you have a database server (running SQL Server) and an application server (running the NAV server service). That’s the two tiers, the RTC client is the third tier. It’s not recommended to run both SQL and NAV service on the same physical/virtual server but have those on separate Windows servers. But the same way as you can add multiple databases to your SQL Server, then you can also add multiple NAV services to the same NAV server.
If you already have this environment running, which I can read above that you have, then all you need to do is to use the Dynamics NAV backup functionality of the classic client to create a backup of you live company. This backup can then be restored into you test database. But before doing this, then make sure that it doesn’t have any companies with the same name as the one in your live company. You can rename it after you restore it, but not before or while restoring it.
If there are differences in the table structure between your live and your test database, where you have removed any fields in the test database (or maybe made text fields shorter), which contains data in the live, then your restore will fail.
I would suggest rather than creating test database on live server better create it on another server which might not have same configuration or on low level configured machine .
This will not make any confusion while dealing with any data or development.