Enterprise Test Data Management Practicum vs. Marketing Hype
By Chris Kraus, August 2018
Enterprise landscapes are highly complex and interrelated. To get good test data, referential and logical integrity must be preserved, and not all relationships are explicit. Data has to be correlated across tests and systems. The data needs to have the context of the business process being executed, positive or negative test, standard orders, or out-of-stock orders, etc. Most TDM tools on the market generate data based on a single set of functional requirements and lack the ability to correlate data across a horizontal end-to-end business process test.
This paper explores the key challenges to enterprise-class test data management and why there is no simple-solution. Key topics covered include:
- The difference between vertical and horizontal end-to-end tests
- Various approaches to Test Data Management including: production data replication, data masking vs. synthetic data, Cucumber behavior-driven development (BDD) framework, pairwise-based matching and automated self-sufficient test cases
- Key considerations for selecting an enterprise class test data management solution
