5 Advantages of Test Data Management Tools
Tags: test, data, management, tools
Published: 2024-05-02 16:14:33

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Managing test data efficiently is key for software testing success. However, the process of creating, maintaining, and provisioning quality test data can be complex and time-consuming without the right tools for test data management. Test data management (TDM) tools aim to streamline and automate test data-related tasks to help QA and testing teams be more productive and enable better software quality. Below, we will explore the key advantages TDM tools have to offer.

**Reduce Effort in Test Data Preparation**

Preparing test data manually for software testing is often repetitive and tedious work. Testers need to identify what data is required, source it from various systems, mask any sensitive information, transform it to the required format, and load it into test environments. Doing this consistently across large-scale test cycles is extremely labor-intensive. TDM tools help automate most of these tasks through workflows to generate, mask, subset, transform, and populate test data as needed by tests. This significantly reduces effort, allows quicker test cycles, and enables testers to focus on value-added analysis instead of mundane data tasks.

**Ensure High-Quality Test Data**

Bad-quality test data leads to software testing issues down the line. Wrong data can cause false test failures, mask defects, and lead to time wasted in triage. TDM tools allow for defining data quality rules, scanning data as per these rules, and profiling to pinpoint quality issues in source data sets. Data subsets can be automatically created based on specific test conditions required to cover all test scenarios. This improves overall test coverage and defect-finding ability through the availability of high-quality, targeted test data.

**Enable Test Data Reuse Across Cycles** 

Creating cohesive data sets from scratch for large testing initiatives can stretch for weeks across teams. With TDM tools, data subsets can be saved into centralized repositories and reused across multiple test cycles with simple search, clone, and provision functionality. Secured data masking profiles can also be saved and reapplied without reinventing the wheel. This accelerates test environment setup tremendously allowing faster retesting and defect rediscovery. Data maintenance is also simpler through centralized, access-controlled data repositories for all test needs.

**Reduce Risk from Test Data Sprawl**

When testing teams manage data in siloed desktop files and folders, it often leads to situations where uncontrolled copies of data get proliferated across multiple shared folders, emails, and laptops. This creates governance challenges regarding security, compliance, and outdated test data usage leading to quality issues. TDM tools offer lifecycle management of data in standardized repositories with access controls, masking, usage audits, and data maintenance in a central place for all teams. This reduces data sprawl-related risks and ensures clean, production-class data handling.

**Provide Reporting and Analytics**

Testing with mere gut feel rather than data-driven insight into application usage and edge cases leads to limited test coverage. TDM tools allow the discovery of data relationships, the creation of frequency distribution curves, trend analysis, and eccentric value detection on source data sets. Test data can hence be tailored to focus on less transacted scenarios and rare edge cases that often harbor defects missed during regular testing. Historical test data usage reports also provide optimization insights on how to reuse datasets more efficiently during subsequent test cycles.

**Conclusion**

TDM tools fill a key gap in enabling rapid test cycles through reliable test data at reduced costs. With the right tools, testing gains a key ally in keeping pace with Agile and DevOps-focused software teams by breaking away from data bottlenecks. Opkey’s revolutionary test data management solution leverages test mining technology to autonomously mine quality test data directly from a client’s environment. By gathering master data details from multiple sources, Opkey can reduce manual QA data collection efforts by up to 40%. This TDM solution shines during EBS to Cloud migrations or Oracle quarterly regression testing, ensuring test data is always ready. Ultimately, Opkey’s automated approach to test data collection and maintenance saves time and money – a must-have for today’s agile testing needs.