How to test transaction log shipping

Question

We are a small division of a larger company and we are required to keep a server at the corporate office as a disaster recovery server. I want to use SQL's (2005) transaction log shipping feature to keep the offsite server up-to-date.

The problem is that Mama Corprorate wants proof that the database is functional. For example, a screenshot of the remote session showing a query of the orders table showing the most recent group of orders (with the order date). Is there a way to satisfy this requirement without breaking the log shipping? I suggested that I give them a screen of the history for the LS Restore job, but they didn't like that idea since "that really isn't telling you that its working" according to them.

Thanks!

Answer 1

From the videos above from Bogdan Sahlean, I changed the database mode from NORECOVERY TO STANDBY and that has resolved the issue. This allows us to still run the same query as evidence.