I’m going to go out on a limb and make a bold statement: \u00a0testing software is hard. \u00a0Okay, not that bold of a statement since we all know that. \u00a0No matter what language or platform, software has to be tested thoroughly. \u00a0Whether you’re delivering a product to a small company or trying to be the next Twitter, lack of good testing will cost you. \u00a0That cost might be\u00a0disguised\u00a0as time or customers, but at the end of the day, the cost hits someone’s bank account.<\/p>\n
As Architects and Engineers, we solve problems. \u00a0Over the years, we’ve made great strides in solving the difficulty that is testing our software. \u00a0We have frameworks that allow us to more easily mock methods for unit testing. \u00a0We have in memory databases for integration tests. \u00a0We even have browser automation tools that make functional testing fun again.<\/p>\n
What do all these testing methods need? \u00a0Test data. \u00a0Test Data Generation is the means by which some form of data is generated automatically by a system so that all of our tests have something to assert against. \u00a0Unfortunately, this concept is lost on most software shops. \u00a0Some of us are populating excel files with sheet after sheet of data to be read in by our tests. \u00a0Some of us are taking snapshots of the production database, hopefully scrubbing it of\u00a0sensitive\u00a0data, and loading it into a test database. \u00a0 Talk to 5 different Software Engineers and you’ll get 5 different methods by which they get test data. \u00a0And for the most part, all these methods are flawed.<\/p>\n
Here are 5 questions to ask yourself about your test data:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Test Data Generation is most often an afterthought when it comes to testing. \u00a0Test data is just as important as any assertion in your test. \u00a0Without the proper test data, what are you testing? \u00a0If you answered yes to any of the questions above you should consider evaluating how you’re generating your test data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m going to go out on a limb and make a bold statement: \u00a0testing software is hard. \u00a0Okay, not that bold of a statement since we all know that. \u00a0No matter what language or platform, software has to be tested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n