Work Area Usage Intent and Validation Status

Work Areas have a special attribute called Usage Intent whose allowed values are Development, Quality Control, and Production. Oracle LSH enforces the following rules based on a Work Area's usage intent value and the validation status of the Work Area and all its object instances:

• To be installed in a Work Area, object instances must have a validation status equal to or greater than the usage intent of the Work Area.
• The Work Area cannot be promoted to a validation status higher than the validation status of any of its object instances.
• No executables can be run in a Work Area until the Work Area's validation status is equal to or greater than its usage intent value, except by users with the special Install Qualify Submit privilege on the Work Area. This is to allow testing of the Work Area before making it generally available for use.
• Full installation and Table instance replacement during partial installation are not allowed in Work Areas with a usage intent of Production. This is to protect production data from deletion.

These rules support the following intended Work Area usage:

1. Development. When you create a Work Area, the system sets both its Usage Intent attribute and its validation status to Development. When you create an object definition and/or instance, the system sets its validation status to Development. When a Definer has successfully conducted informal testing on an object, according to your organization's standards, he or she sets the object's validation status to Quality Control (or requests a privileged user to change the status, depending on your security design).

   When all the object instances in a Work Area have a validation status of Quality Control, a privileged user clones the Work Area, creating duplicates of all object instances with pointers to the same object definitions and the same version number and validation statuses as the originals. The system creates a label for both Work Areas indicating that they are identical. The privileged user enters text for the label and creates the new Work Area with a usage intent of Quality Control. However, its validation status remains at Development.

2. Quality Control. Install the new Quality Control Work Area. While its validation status (Development) is lower than its usage intent (Quality Control), only a user with the Install Qualify Submit privilege can run executables. That privileged user loads fresh data and tests the installation. The privileged user then promotes the Work Area validation status to Quality Control. Users with normal access to the Quality Control Work Area can then test the objects.

   If testers find bugs or other problems, developers should fix them in the Development Work Area. To do this, you can clone the QC Work Area as a new Development Work Area overwriting the old one, perform a full installation, and load fresh data. When all objects have been fixed and tested, and their validation status upgraded, you can clone the Work Area onto the QC Work Area. The cloning operation updates only objects that have been modified.

   Promote each object definition and instance to Production when it meets your production standards. Clone the QC Work Area to create a Production Work Area.

3. Production. Install the new Production Work Area. While its validation status is lower than its usage intent, only a user with the Install Qualify Submit privilege can run executables. That privileged user loads fresh data and tests the installation. The privileged user then promotes the Work Area validation status to Production. Users with normal access to the Production Work Area can then run the application.

   Run the application as necessary for your business purposes. Using the same cloning procedures described above, modify the objects as necessary over time. Make modifications through the Development Work Area, test each modified object definition in the QC Work Area, and clone the QC Work Area to the Production Work Area.

   Note:

   The cloning operation replaces only objects that have been modified. If the cloning operation would be destructive to Tables or data (for example, the cloned Work Area did not include an existing Table or Table column, or a Column length was shorter) you receive a warning, but are allowed to continue.
4. Retired. When you close a trial, you can retire the Production Work Area that holds its data, preserving the data in a frozen state, recreatable as it was at any point in time. You can still write Programs that read the data. For example, you can combine and analyze the data with data from other closed or current trials.