Missouri uses TimeShiftX® for Insurance project

Business Needs

Mission-critical date logic required comprehensive testing

State of Missouri was creating a web-based, java insurance application. Their original software application was based on a legacy mainframe system. However, with the help of an I.T. consultancy, they migrated and upgraded the system to a new java, web-based distributed application on a mixed infrastructure inside their state data center.

The environment is contained within Active Directory and runs application servers and 3rd party databases on multiple platforms. The complexity of their environment paired with Active Directory blocking clock changes presented a serious challenge as the Missouri development team needed an easy solution to enable time travel.

• Full lifecycle of benefits & claims
• Legacy mainframe data migration verification
• Future expiration dates and renewals
• Multi-tier Java application servers
• 3rd party multi-platform databases
• Benefit disbursements and underwriting rules

The Challenge

Clock changes met Active Directory & operational roadblocks

Active Directory (like Kerberos and other domain security authentication protocols) has a security restriction where a time change of 5 minutes or more kicks servers off the domain and thus blocks time travel. Main obstacles included:

• Active Directory domain authentication breaking upon server clock shifts
• Removing Active Directory would destroy environment parity with production
• Complex multi-platform OS and database dependencies requiring synchronized dates
• Strict state project delivery deadlines and consulting resource constraints

Without TimeShiftX, the development team would have needed to figure out how to remove Active Directory, thus breaking their test validity as their Test and Production environments match. By implementing TimeShiftX, the development team was able to utilize their current Test environment and date shift within Active Directory without any issues.

The TimeShiftX Solution

Virtual time simulation without altering host operating clocks

With a deadline approaching, the Missouri development team needed a time shift software solution that was easy to use and integrate. The team decided TimeShiftX was the best solution on the market to meet their critical date testing requirements and provide the best test coverage.

In the project, each stage required data from the legacy system to be used to conduct a full lifecycle scenario of the benefits and claims. TimeShiftX gave testers full flexibility to time travel the entire application stack to the required past start dates, and run through entire business processes and test each business case until they reached future expiration. These date simulations increased testing coverage and improved QA efficiency as every business rule was now able to be completely temporal tested.

Documented Benefits

What changed for development, QA, and operational timelines

Benefits achieved by the State of Missouri and their consulting team:

• Instantly time traveled the entire distributed environment, spanning multiple apps within Active Directory
• Retained full test validity by keeping the Active Directory test environment identical to production
• Quick and easy deployment, allowing infrastructure staff to concentrate on core migration tasks
• Provided complete compatibility out of the box across heterogeneous multi-OS and database systems
• Engineer confirmation: “Without TimeShiftX we would have not been able to run our date simulation tests and meet our deadlines.”

One of the major requirements of the Missouri team was to time travel their distributed and multi-OS platform environment in a simple and manageable way. This was satisfied with TimeShiftX which allowed the Missouri testing team to have the ability to time travel and synchronize the entire distributed application from a single click.