Test Data Management Use Cases
Improving performance, security, and compliance in application testing environments are all use cases for Test Data Management.
Using TDM to Improve Performance in Application Testing Environments
Testing teams need to be efficient and agile to create and maintain test data while maintaining a collaborative testing environment. You can use the features available in TDM to help you meet this requirement.
You can perform the following tasks to improve performance in a testing environment:
- •You can create subsets of production data to use as test data. The data subset retains primary and foreign key relations and the data remains referentially intact. Use data subset to create manageable and scalable data for testing.
- •You can directly copy flat file test data from TDM to an integrated test tool and use the data to run test cases.
- •You can generate data based on rules that define the type of data required. Use data generation when you need test data but do not want to use production data. For example, consider test teams that work on applications that handle sensitive data. The test teams do not have access to production data. They can use data generation to create test data.
- •You can store multiple versions of test data in a common location. Use the test data warehouse as a single and secure location to maintain required versions of test data. You can store data from multiple machines that host a Test Data Manager Service in a domain in a single test data warehouse. Multiple testing teams can then share the stored data and collaborate efficiently.
- •You can restore a data set version to return the test environment to a particular state. For example, you might need to return the test environment to an older state or to the original state after you run some test cases. Use the test data warehouse to reduce the time and effort to create and manually manipulate test data.
Using TDM for Security and Compliance in Application Testing Environments
Testing teams need to be compliant and maintain strict controls on the data used in testing environments.
You must identify sensitive information in huge volumes of production data and then ensure that you do not expose the information in the test data. This is a challenge and a compliance and security risk.
You can perform the following tasks to help with security and compliance in a test environment:
- •To analyze the data and identify sensitive information in the data, run profiles in TDM. You can compare the data against multiple compliance regulation standards to ensure that the data meets standard compliance regulations. For example, run a profile on the data to identify columns that contain sensitive data according to PII, PCI, or PHI compliance regulations.
- •To remove sensitive data that you identify, run a data masking operation in TDM. You can use standard masking formats such as credit card numbers or Social Security numbers to mask data or create customized formats to mask data.
- •To reduce the risk associated with creating multiple copies of test data, store the data in the test data warehouse. Multiple teams that use different machines that host a Test Data Manager Service in a domain can access a single test data warehouse.
Using TDM With Data Validation Option to Create Verified Test Data
Data Validation Option (DVO) is a solution that you use with PowerCenter to validate data. You can validate target data to verify that it is accurate and that the transformation process did not introduce errors or inconsistencies.
Perform data validation to compare production and development environments when you use TDM to create test data.
For example, consider test teams that need to submit compliance reports for test data created from production data. You can use TDM with DVO to deliver test data with verifiable proof that the test data does not contain sensitive data values.