We are trying to encourage users to leverage the power of the software whilst mitigating the risk. So to encourage their probing, I would like to create a Test Company (i.e., Directory) with only the tables copied, but none of the data from my very large database?
- My initial thought was to make a basic company, then copy over the settings and table files. Given the files I see available through my experience with back-ups and OC inquiries, that doesn't look promising.
- The other way I could see to do this would be to copy over the entire DB and then pare down the data through archiving and the movement of records to history. I envision that will take weeks and maybe months of time.
- And if I simply copying the current DB over to a new Test Company and leave things as is, it will add hours on to our IT team for the software change-over process every year when they have to update all the DB's as part of that process. They already are required to be here around the clock for al least one day; on occasion it has sometimes become a two day affair when things do not go right. I just don't want to add to their grief.
Any additional thoughts on how this could be accomplished? I basically want to end up with a scaled down DB that reflects our current design, but not all the clutter of our data?