Maintaining the Environments

An environment is made up of a set of releases and their related tables that are used to establish a certain level of Business Rules. It can be a level of development (Dev), quality assurance (QA), or production.

This environment has all the database scripts to build the default tables with the standard column names, sizes, and keys.

If there are custom columns, these should be added to the scripts and the database dropped and reestablished with the new DDL layout. The table names and standard column names must be maintained, as these are integral to the system as a whole. For example, each Business Rules table must contain RELID, LAST_UPDATED_USER_ID, and LAST_UPDATED_TIMESTAMP.

Should the names of the standard columns or tables be changed, problems can occur that may not be reported as a problem. The system design allows maximum flexibility for users to expand the tables and columns.

If new tables are to be added to the environment, the new DDL must be built and the database reestablished. The database administrator must add the new table name to the TABLES table. This requires the database administrator to establish the name of the table, hierarchy, and other items in the table. This done through the DB2® console and is not part of the Business Rules user interface.

Once the development level is configured with the user customization, the database for the environment is complete. If a new environment is to be established, the Business Rules user interface creates the environment name. The database administrator establishes the scripts to create the database (usually this is from the development scripts).

Using the permissions feature, the administrator establishes the groups and permissions for the new environment. Users are added to the groups. The new environment is ready to be populated with data.

Each environment has the description, schema, promotion order, and distribution rule configuration associated with it.