Solving Test Data Challenges
GenRocket is taking a leadership role in the evolution of traditional Test Data Management. We built the industry’s most comprehensive Test Data Generation platform and have extended it to become an Enterprise Test Data Automation platform.
Test Data Automation requires 3 essential ingredients that GenRocket now offers: Precise control over data quality, automated self-service provisioning and a fully scalable enterprise test data platform.
Test Data Automation is a comprehensive solution that eliminates industry-wide problems that compromise testing efficiency and effectiveness and each one is describe below.
Problem: Manual Test Data Creation
The World Quality Report found that 69% of companies are still creating data manually, principally with spreadsheets, in order to provision the data needed for testing. Manual test data creation is both time-consuming and cumbersome, but necessary if testing requirements call for data value combinations and permutations that are not readily available from other sources.
Solution: Test Data Automation can dramatically accelerate the manual data creation process by 1,000% or more by defining and generating any volume of test data with total control over the required data variations (patterns, combinations, and permutations) and the desired output format.
Problem: Production Data Mining and Masking
When the need for test data arises, many QA teams mine the application production database for relevant subsets that can be used for testing. The challenge is the random nature of the data they extract. It’s not controlled data and usually requires manual modification by testers to be useful. Additionally, sensitive customer information must be carefully masked to secure the data and conform to relevant privacy laws.
Solution: With Test Data Automation testers can generate the precise data they need for any type of positive, negative, edge case or combinatorial testing with real-time synthetic test data that is generated at 10,000 rows per second and is 100% secure.
Problem: Test Data for End-to-End Testing
One of the most demanding QA challenges is testing a business process across multiple applications and their APIs with end-to-end integration testing. This places a special demand on test data for validating workflows that process information and make decisions based the results. Test data must be dynamic in order to validate different outcomes for a variety of input values.
Data accuracy is critical if the test involves the use of real transaction or account codes to test different paths of the workflow. End-to-end integration testing may also involve multiple data structures and formats to ensure compatibility between diverse systems.
Solution: GenRocket’s Test Data Automation solves complex end-to-end testing challenges with its ability to define test data based on business rules and combine synthetic data with production data that is queried during the testing process and injected into an automated test procedure.
Problem: Simulating Complex Data Feeds
Data feeds are batch or real-time streams of data that represent an exchange of electronic information like credit transactions, money transfers, insurance claims or supply chain orders and fulfillment. They are often transmitted and processed in high volume with an expectation of total accuracy and precision. Testing applications that process complex data feeds can be very demanding.
Solution: The GenRocket Enterprise Test Data Automation solution is designed for provisioning test data for any complex data feed in industries like healthcare, financial services, eCommerce, and supply chain logistics. Same day provisioning of high-volume data feeds (in the millions of rows) is an easy and automated process with self-service modules and a wizard-based user interface.
Problem: TDM System Cost and Complexity
In addition to manual data creation and the mining and masking of production data, another data provisioning alternative is the use of a traditional Test Data Management platform. The option is often considered, but infrequently implemented because of its high cost and complexity. TDM systems pull, copy, mask and refresh production data. This is a slow, complex process and has come to represent a bottleneck for testing.
The preferred model is distributed self-service where testers can provision their own test data when they need it. As the next generation of Test Data Management, Enterprise Test Data Automation combines the use of Real-Time Synthetic Test Data with queried production data to maximize speed and data quality with a solution that offers simplicity at a much lower cost.
Solution: With its self-service modules and a wizard-based user interface, GenRocket’s Test Data Automation solution radically improves the simplicity and efficiency of test data provisioning. Adaptable methods for integrating GenRocket with test automation tools and frameworks complete the picture and maximize the return on investment in test automation technology.
We have also developed a deployment strategy for Test Data Automation in cooperation with a customer who has fully implemented Agile best practices in their QA operation. Click the button below to learn about our Test Data Automation Deployment Strategy.