Blog - K2view

Solving the Test Data Management Problem

Written by Sarah Carlton | June 4, 2020

Entity-based test data management tools allow for a 360-degree view of all data, increased security, and the ability to correct errors during test cycles.

Have you wanted to learn more about entity-based test data management tools? If so, you're in luck! Hod Rotem, Chief Product Evangelist at K2view, tells all in a webinar archived here. Here are some highlights from the webinar:

The Test Data Management Data Problem

The problem starts with the monotony of going line by line, column by column, to extract and analyze data under traditional data management, which costs the business time and money – primarily due to the inefficiencies of traditional data management. You need to remove these traditional constraints and instead access and analyze your data holistically. A business entity, or a digital version of a person, place, or thing, enables your company to organize data and remove the conventional restrictions of data management.

You may be thinking, "Being able to access my data in its entirety is great, but that probably translates into interruptions when pulling the data." However, that's not the case.

With entity-based test data management, you can access and move test data as needed in real time, without impacting any of your development or testing teams. You can freely view your data holistically with zero impact on any of your teams. Lack of interruptions means your systems remain up and running, which, in turn, means less time is spent, and efficiency is increased.

Security

What if a massive data breach could be rendered impossible? That may sound like a fairytale, but a business entity approach actually does this. All the data for each instance of a business entity is managed and stored in its own individually encrypted Micro-Database™, and any datasets containing sensitive information is protected by data masking tools, thus maximizing security.

The Re-Do Button

Imagine you're in the middle of a 3-day-long test cycle when you discover a mistake. Maybe your teeth clench, or you find yourself releasing a low sigh at the thought of having to start your test cycle all over again. If only there were a "re-do" button. But wait! Entity-based test management tools feature a "time machine" that creates multiple snapshots as testing progresses.

These snapshots enable you to reset to a period before the bug appeared, so, instead of restarting the whole cycle, you can go back to just before the error occurred, whether it was ten minutes or hours prior. And this function doesn't interrupt other testers, even when they're in the same environment, because the "re-do" only impacts the specific dataset in question.

These are just some of the capabilities of entity-based test data management. To learn more, download our whitepaper.