How to test content databases without triggering alerts and workflows in test environment

Question

Let's consider the following:

You want to restore and attach SP Content Database in the test farm to test for folllowing scenario(s):

• Scenario A - To test if SharePoint 2007 database can be upgraded to SharePoint 2010
• Scenario B - To test some other things you plan to deploy in this environment, new features, permissions etc.

So what's your best practice to ensure this testing copy of the production database does not send any alerts, does not trigger workflow notifications or any other notifications...

One of the choices is to disable outgoing email alerts or timer for the test farm, but what if you need outgoing emails/timer for some other stuff being tested?

UPDATE: In case this is a new customer and a large Content DB, usually there is no single person that can tell me which features / workflows / alerts are being used...

Answer 1

I usually just don't put in an outgoing e-mail server.

If email functionality is needed, alerts are easy to remove for a test farm. It's unsupported to modify the sp databases directly but all the alerts for a db are stored in two tables: SchedSubscriptions and ImmedSubscriptions. Just delete all of the rows in those two tables and there won't be any alerts for any sites in that db.

As for workflows i'm not sure how to handle those.