What is a recommended practice for testing platform integrations?

Using staging environments for test runs is a recommended practice for testing platform integrations because staging environments closely mimic the production environment without the risks associated with making changes or running tests in production. Staging environments allow engineers to evaluate integration performance, identify issues, and validate functionality in a controlled setting. This helps ensure that any detected problems can be resolved before releasing changes to the production environment, thus minimizing potential disruptions or security risks to actual users and data.

Testing in production, while sometimes necessary, carries the risk of impacting real users and data integrity. Relying only on historical data does not provide a comprehensive view of current integration behavior and may overlook real-time scenarios. Limiting testing to single components fails to capture the interactions and dependencies between different components, which can lead to integration issues that only arise in a full system context. Therefore, utilizing staging environments is critical for thorough and safe testing of integrations before they go live.