The Microsoft® Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server™ 2005 and the Microsoft® Business Intelligence Toolset

14.1. System Deployment

Before you actually start deploying your system, you should perform extensive testing. Throughout the development process, you should have been conducting unit tests to confirm that components have been written properly. As we discuss in the next section, you need to perform extensive end-to-end testing, too.

The less time you spend on testing, the harder the deployment process will be. If you don't perform end-to-end testing before you deploy to production, you're guaranteed to find problems on production. If you don't rigorously check data quality, your business users will do it for you, and lose confidence in the DW/BI system at the same time. If you don't check performance and tune the system in advance, you'll have to do it while trying to avoid disrupting business users.

If you test, tune, and adjust the system before you begin deployment, the move to production will be fairly straightforward. This is especially true if this is a new system. Moving incremental changes into production while minimizing end-user impact can be a delicate dance.

14.1.1. Pre-Deployment Testing

To successfully deploy a new DW/BI system, or changes to an existing system, plan ahead and test repeatedly until you've verified:

• System testing procedures: Your system testing procedures are sufficiently rigorous that you can prove to users or auditors that the system has been thoroughly tested.

• Operations process testing: The databases load and process correctly.

• Data quality assurance ...