Test Data Management Concepts

BIZDATAX IS AN EKOBIT BRAND

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Executive Summary

We are witnessing a rapid growth of ICT systems, and

thus a significant increase in the volume of data in

organizations around the world. This trend causes the

need to increase ICT systems quality control, especially

regarding the management of test data. Additionally, we

must not ignore the responsibility of the organizations in

terms of data protection and data privacy.

The only way to ensure the quality of ICT systems is through high awareness

of Quality Assurance (QA) and application of QA and, in particular, the software

testing process, during the entire lifecycle of the applications. One of the most

important disciplines within the testing process is Test Data Management (TDM).

TDM introduces a number of new concepts in the testing process (for example,

the concept of near-real data, see below) to which each professional TDM tool

must have a response. Working for years on complex projects for international

clients, we have noticed the importance of high-quality implementation of the

key concepts of TDM and decided to build a solution that would help both our

customers and us. The result is BizDataX, an innovative solution for test data

management.

BizDataX enables just in time provisioning of near real relevant test data, assures

compliancy to data privacy standards and provides seamless integration with

common test management and test automation tools. BizDataX fits seamlessly

into the testing process and provides you with a personalized and efficient

generation of test data with minimal costs.

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Introduction

Test Data Management (TDM) is an integral part of the

testing process, supporting the process in all of its phases,

enabling fast provisioning of the test data at the lowest

possible cost while staying compliant to industry and

public data privacy regulations. TDM is a foundation for

test automation, thus increasing test process efficiency,

minimizing risks and increasing the overall quality of the

application and systems being tested.

Here are the key concepts of a well thought-out test data management solution:

•   Near real data

•   Data regulation compliancy

•   Fast test data provisioning

•   Powerful and flexible test data rules designer

•   Support for key test data generation concepts, such as data masking, data

subsetting and synthetic data generation

•   Support for a variety of source and target data repositories

•   Support for data analysis

•   Test data project configuration management

•   Support for third party test management and test automation tools

•   Enterprise features (scalability, role based security..)

•   Documenting and archiving capabilities

This document’s goal is to help you get a better understanding of each of these

key concepts and to provide you with information on how the BizDataX Test Data

Management solution implements these concepts.

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Near real data

The concept of near real or realistic enough data relies on

the fact that test data should resemble, in terms of data

quality and semantics, as much as possible the data in the

production databases (or the data that is expected to be

used in real world scenarios). This is a key concept in a test

process, assuring the correlation between the controlled

test environment and the real world scenarios.

BizDataX employs many data generation and data masking techniques and

algorithms that enable generation of the near real data. Some of them are lists

of replacement values, national identification number generators, generators of

financial values, generators of phone numbers, emails and many others.

BIZDATAX WORKFLOW EXAMPLE

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Data regulations compliancy

Using production data to generate test data is a common

and often preferred method of test data provisioning.

Along with many positive aspects of doing this, there are

privacy and business concerns that need to be taken into

account. A TDM solution must be supplied with techniques

that enable flexible data masking on sensitive data in

order to comply with the various data protection laws.

When using algorithms to generate near real data, BizDataX already takes data

privacy into account. For example, when generating credit card numbers, BizDataX

generates them from a range of invalid credit card numbers that satisfy all format

requirements, but are not issued to real persons worldwide. BizDataX already

comes with a number of prepackaged algorithms and methods, such as data

shuffling, but also uses the .NET development platform to create any number of

new, privacy-aware test data generation methods.

BIZDATAX WORKFLOW – GENERATE CREDIT CARD INFO

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Fast test data provisioning

Depending on the business scenarios, test data could be needed

on a daily, even hourly basis. In a complex business applications

environment, a demand for the ‘just-in-time’ relevant test data

will be very high. This can incur significant costs for hardware and

trained resources who will be responsible for providing test data to

testing teams.

BizDataX is designed from the ground up to enable fast test data generation workflow design,

deployment and execution. You can create complex test data scenarios using BizDataX

Designer, deploy them in BizDataX Runtime and generate billions of test data records, all

within hours. Once created, test data generation jobs can be executed an arbitrary number of

times. Special care is taken to speed up the jobs execution. BizDataX Runtime engine analyzes

declarative rules to determine the optimal execution plan, generate statements, and achieve

the best possible performance with parallel execution and paging of large record sets.

BIZDATAX DESIGNER AND RUNTIME

Designer

Runtime

ManagementConsole

Host

Host

Host

TestDatabases

Flat fileXML

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Powerful and flexible test data rules designerEvery TDM solution needs to have an intuitive and efficient way to design rules for test data

generation. This is where most solutions today fail. In order to cover all the real world scenarios,

your rules design engine can’t be bound to just a number of predefined rules for a specific

industry or use only scripting languages or even worse (education costs) own proprietary

language as an extensibility point. Both user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) also play a

very important role when choosing the right solution.

BizDataX Designer integrates with the Microsoft Visual Studio environment and Workflow

Editor. Wizards and visual clues support the process of defining the rules. Drag-n-drop helps

set up the common parameters, the properties window is there to help tweak the details. The

rules are designed visually using domain-specific terminology. One doesn’t have to think about

tables, views, raw SQL, loops, cursors, transactions and such. BizDataX naturally extends to the

.NET platform offering full support for programming languages such as C#, JScript etc.

By leveraging Microsoft’s world class development platform, BizDataX speeds up test data

generation workflow

development,

shortens the education

curve and cuts the

overall cost of test

data management.

BIZDATAX DESIGNER

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Support for key test data generation concepts like data masking, data subsetting and synthetic data generationBizDataX enables provisioning of test data by combining feature-rich data

masking, data subsetting and synthetic data generation capabilities. When

masking real data, generating from scratch

or combining the two, the system uses

built-in:

•   Lists of replacement values: person names

with country/region and gender attributes,

places, postal codes, streets, banks…

•   National identification number generators

(SSN, AHV, OIB…)

•   Generators of financial values: credit card

numbers, account numbers, IBANs

•   Generators of phone numbers, emails…

•   Data shuffling engine

•   Templates with placeholders used to

populate free text fields

•   Formulas to shift dates

•   Conditional constructs to handle special

cases

•   Distributions to generate data with certain

statistical properties

•   and more..

Many day-to-day testing processes

are able to function and benefit from

using a very small subsets of originally

huge sets of records. Smaller databases

lower the investment in hardware and

software licenses needed to build a parallel

infrastructure.

Masked data

Real data

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Support for a variety of source and target data repositories

In many TDM scenarios, access to production data is

needed to generate test data. Production data is typically

stored in many different data storage systems, and

accessing data across them with some

sort of home-grown, script-based

approach could be very challenging.

Support for different data repositories

is a must for a good TDM solution.

BizDataX can connect to a wide variety of data sources,

including relational and legacy databases. It can

also connect to flat files, Excel files, MS SQL Analysis

Services projects and XML. Directly connecting to

different data storage systems is supplemented by the

option to transfer data to an intermediate database to

separate the core test data generation process from

ETL.

The resulting test database can be created in a variety

of database formats. Additionally, BizDataX preserves

referential data integrity across database and system

boundaries.

BIZDATAX WORKFLOW EXAMPLE WITH ACCESS TO ORACLE, DB2 AND SQL SERVER DATABASES

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Support for data analysis

A TDM solution has to have the capability to analyze production

data in order to accurately define test data generation rules

according to the business rules. A thorough data analysis is the

foundation for successful and efficient test process. It enables

identifying relevant data needed to complete test cases, thus

saving time and increasing the quality of the process. It also helps

optimize test data volumes for easier database management and

lower hardware costs.

BizDataX can connect to a wide variety of data sources, importing their schemas and enabling

production metadata analysis. BizDataX also enables definition of criteria for identifying and

grouping equivalent records and support equivalence partitioning. Data record groups can

be analyzed to identify

special cases and achieve

100% test case coverage.

The criteria is then

used by the sampling

and subsetting engine

to extract the minimal

relevant subset of original

data or by generators to

generate synthetic data

that targets specific test

scenarios.

SUPPORTING EQUIVALENCE PARTITIONING

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Test data project configuration management

As the application and the underlying database change,

the test data (generation) rules also need to be upgraded

from time to time. A good TDM solution should enable

test data rules versioning in order to support application

upgrades, transparency and reusability, especially when

it comes to testing older versions of the same application

(which, of course, happens a lot).

BizDataX integrates into

the software development

lifecycle. With BizDataX,

you’ll be able to check-

in changes to test data

projects, just as you would be

able to check-in any changes

on the application’s source

code; test data rules would

always be up to date and

changes would be tracked in

your source control system.

Versioning of test data

rules works with standard

technologies such as the

Microsoft Team Foundation

Server, Git, Subversion and

many other source code

management solutions.

TEST DATA PROJECT TREE AND TEST DATA JOB EXECUTION HISTORY

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Data labeledfor test cases

Other TM/TAtools

Test data

Support for third party test management and test automation tools

Organizations report that they spend between 50-75 out

of every 100 minutes of manual test execution time on

finding and preparing appropriate test data. Yet they are

still unable to achieve stable test automation due to a lack

of reliable test data control. Test Management and Test

Automation solutions can greatly benefit from integration

with TDM solutions as they, used efficiently together,

could significantly increase the testing execution times.

In addition to generating test data, BizDataX can be configured to label data for

test cases and provide data for test automation tools, such as Microsoft Test

Manager, HP Unified Functional Testing, Tricentis Tosca, imbus Test Bench etc.

BIZDATAX INTEGRATION SCENARIOS

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Enterprise features (scalability, role based security...)

Processing TBs of data in an enterprise environment requires

support for features, such as the role-based security model, ability

to scale test data generation jobs on several hosts, job execution

status protocol, to name a few. These features come at a price and

are not there by default on every TDM solution on the market.

As already mentioned in the ‘Fast test data provisioning’ section, BizDataX Runtime is an

enterprise level application that supports role-based security and other enterprise features and

fits perfectly within a complex IT landscape.

BizDataX Runtime can be installed on a single or on multiple systems, virtualized or real, and

managed centrally with industry standard tools, such as Microsoft Management Console.

BIZDATAX RUNTIME

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Documenting, protocolling and archiving capabilitiesIn order to comply with data privacy regulations and corporate policies, a TDM solution must

support documenting of all steps within a test data project. This documentation should enable

external and internal audits to easily validate rules and workflows used to generate test data.

Moreover, a TDM solution should protocol all test data generation jobs executions to support

transparency and traceability within the test

process. Once the test data project is over, it

should be archived and eventually restored

to support generating historical test data.

BizDataX supports documenting each and

every step within the BizDataX Test Data

Project in a visual manner. Complete rule

sets can be exported or printed out when

a hard copy version of documentation is

requested. Every time a test data generation

job executes on a BizDataX Runtime, a

status log is created with all the relevant

log information, including who started the

execution and when. BizDataX uses a variety

of software configuration management

tools, such as the Team Foundation Server

and Git to version, archive and

restore any number of BizDataX

Test Data Projects in order to

recreate historical test data. The

test data generated and labeled

for the test cases by BizDataX

is saved in XML format, which

can be transformed and used

for documentation purposes or

imported to test management/

automation tools.

BIZDATAX DOCUMENTING OPTIONS

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BizDataX Professional Services

It is the people and the tools that make the difference!

Our Professional Services Team will help you get the most out of the test data

management process and the BizDataX solution. They will help you set up your

test data environment and assess your test data according to your needs, adapt

BizDataX to fit in your test data usage scenarios and implement new test data

algorithms for your specific requirements (e.g. industry specific data masking

rules). They will also educate your test professionals how to design, deploy and

execute BizDataX test data generation jobs on their own.

Professional services portfolio includes:

Test Data Assesment

Custom Workflow and AlgorithmsImplementation

Proof ofConcept

BizDataX SolutionInstallation

BizDataXWorkshops

BIZDATAX IS AN EKOBIT BRAND

•   deliver near real test data just in

time

•   comply to data privacy regulations

•   support implementation of all test

data scenarios using visual design

tools

•   integrate seamlessly with

common test management and

test automation tools

•   increase test process efficiency

while lowering costs

BizDataX is an innovative Test Data Management solution designed to enable fast

and cost effective provisioning of near-real test data. BizDataX promise is to:

Call Us:

+41 76 579 16 41

+385 1 6312 635

Email: info@bizdatax.com

www.BizDataX.com

Ekobit d.o.o.

Koturaška 69

10000 Zagreb, Croatia, EU

www.ekobit.com

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aminodata GmbH

Gartenstrasse 23

5400 Baden, Switzerland

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