Strategies/Tools for Building Training Database

Question

We are in the process of building a training version of our website and intranet.

The sites are heavy with database interaction (update user data, track workflow, etc.)

The goal is to have a small number of test accounts that people can log into and run through the tools of the site. After the session is over we would revert the data back to it's original state.

We are planning on using a separate training database that is structurally kept in sync with the production database yet has a subset of the production data that is scrambled to show no sensitive info.

Are their any tools available for managing a training database (keeping changes in sync, reverting data, scrambling, etc.)?

We are using Oracle 10g. They have some tools that would be useful but nothing more that about half way.

Answer 1

Prepare a reference database with test data and schedule overnight task whereby test database will be overwritten with a reference one. You'll have to keep these two databases in sync, so see if this is of any help.