It’s Time to Think Differently about Test Data

Test data is no longer a bottleneck for continuous testing when you can generate synthetic test data on-demand and in real-time. With GenRocket’s Test Data Generation platform, high quality test data that reflects even the most complex data models can be provisioned whenever its needed. It’s a different way to think about test data . . . Don’t manage your test data, just generate it!

Sound interesting? Want to see how real-time synthetic test data is superior to test data that has been masked and subsetted from your production database? Just review these 6 essential test data criteria to determine which test data approach is best for your QA team.

Follow the 6 Essential Test Data Criteria

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SPEED: The Time to Provision Test Data

The number one challenge with test data is the time it takes to provision it. According to market research, an average of 3.5 days is needed to provision test data with many QA departments experiencing delays of more than a week.

With GenRocket, Real-Time Synthetic Test Data can be generated at the rate of 1000’s of rows per second. At that rate, million rows of high quality test data can be generated in minutes. No more test data bottleneck…

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COST: The Cost of Provisioning Test Data

Most of the cost of provisioning production test data comes from the complexity associated with managing it. Performing the functions of copying, masking, subsetting, updating, and archiving across numerous applications and databases usually requires an expensive commercial Test Data Management (TDM) system or the complexity of building and maintaining a home-grown TDM platform.

With GenRocket, the idea of Test Data Management is replaced by automation with Test Data Generation (TDG). The GenRocket TDG engine can generate synthetic test data on-demand and based on a test data scenario instruction set that represents the needs of any test case. Synthetic test data generation eliminates the need for most traditional TDM functions, such as masking and subsetting, because test data is generated on-demand with the required rows of data and in the right data format for the test case.

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QUALITY: Complete, Controlled, Conditioned Data

Quality test data is essential for maximizing the accuracy and coverage of software testing. Unfortunately, testers have little control over the quality of data that comes from production. With production test data, you only get what has been captured in the test data subset.

Synthetic test data removes the guesswork that goes into creating a data subset. It is generated using a Test Data Scenario that specifies the nature of the data patterns and permutations required to cover all edge cases of the test. And with GenRocket, referential integrity between test data table is always maintained regardless of the complexity of the data model.

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SECURITY: Total Assurance of Data Privacy

The requirement for data privacy has overtaken the world of software testing. As a result of data privacy laws such as GDPR, PCI and HIPAA, many test organizations are mandating the elimination of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from their test data.

Production data that contains sensitive customer or patient information will never be 100% secure despite the best of intentions to mask and obfuscate the data. The risk is unacceptably high and the cost of a single data breach can run into the millions of dollars.

That’s why Synthetic test data has become an essential alternative. Synthetic test data ensures a total absence of PII from all test data and 100% compliance with all security regulations throughout the testing process.

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SIMPLICITY: Easy Self-Service Provisioning

Provisioning test data with a centrally managed TDM is cumbersome. It perpetuates the siloed nature of the software testing process. In the age of DevOps, it’s time for test data provisioning to become more nimble, with provisioning operating as a Self-service model . GenRocket allows any tester to provision test data for virtually any testing requirement, on-demand and in minutes with an easy to learn and operate user experience.

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VERSATILITY: Testing Framework Compatibility

Last but not least is the criterion that test data provisioning has the versatility to integrate with any testing framework and support any data format. Integration with CI/CD pipelines such as Jenkins and testing frameworks like Selenium is critical for streamlining test operations. And compatibility with multiple data formats from DB2, SQL, JSON, XML and CSV as well as industry specific formats like HL7 for healthcare ensures compatability with any testing environment.

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See how GenRocket can solve your toughest test data challenge with quality synthetic data by-design and on-demand