Test data management

What is meant by Test data management?

Test Data Management (TDM) refers to the systematic process of creating, managing, and providing data for software testing. It encompasses the generation, manipulation, and control of test data to enable high-quality and realistic test scenarios without compromising sensitive information.

Typical software functions in the area of "Test Data Management":

1. Data Generation: Creation of synthetic test data based on defined rules and patterns.
2. Data Masking: Obfuscation of sensitive information in production data for secure test environments.
3. Data Subsetting: Extraction of representative datasets from larger data volumes.
4. Version Control: Management of different versions of test datasets.
5. Data Provisioning: Automated distribution of test data to development and testing teams.
6. Data Analysis: Evaluation of test data quality and coverage.
7. Compliance Checking: Ensuring adherence to data protection guidelines in test data usage.
8. Test Data Lifecycle Management: Managing the entire lifecycle of test data from creation to archiving.

Examples of "Test Data Management":

1. Generation of customer records for e-commerce platform testing.
2. Masking of patient data for health information system testing.
3. Creation of financial transaction data for banking software tests.
4. Provision of test data for agile development teams in CI/CD pipelines.
5. Management of test data for regression testing in large enterprise software systems.
6. Generation of test data for performance and load testing of web applications.