Exam CT-TAE topic 1 question 119 discussion

Two years ago, you deployed a TAS that has been working well with the SUT. This TAS used test data replicated from production that consisted of various customer support contracts each with a particular setting that was being tested (such as standard response times, part replacement policy, etc.). Because these contracts never expired, the data could be used by the test automation with known expected results. A change has recently been made which causes the contracts to expire after 90 days, at which time they must be renewed with updated terms. Expired contracts cannot be used for testing.

You have decided the best way to handle this data change is to query the database for the appropriate contracts and then create a table of the contracts to be used by the test automation. In this way, the scripts will require only minimal changes and the solution will be more flexible.

Given this information, where should this change be implemented to provide the highest level of maintainability?