Why is Test Data Manager Essential in Software Testing?

The role of data in software testing is becoming increasingly important as the industry shifts towards DevOps and continuous delivery. But with the increased emphasis on data comes increased challenges around managing that data, ensuring its quality, and maintaining its security. This is where Test Data Manager (TDM) comes in. 

TDM can help streamline your testing process by providing a centralized platform for managing your test data. If you’re unfamiliar with TDM, read on for a high-level overview of the product and its benefits.

What Is Test Data Manager (TDM)?

Test Data Manager is a software solution from Broadcom Software that helps users automate test data management and speeds up the delivery of test data. It provides a centralized platform for creating, storing, managing, and securing test data. TDM offers several features and benefits that can help streamline your testing process and improve your software quality.

What Can TDM Do?

Before we dive into the benefits of TDM, let’s take a look at what it can do for you. TDM offers features that can prove helpful in:

1. Identifying Sensitive Data

TDM has a TDM Discovery and Profiling feature that’s designed for identifying and classifying sensitive data. This feature can help you identify personal identifiable information (PII) and other types of sensitive data.

But why is this feature important? Well, data privacy is a huge concern for many organizations. And with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect, it’s more important than ever to be able to identify and protect sensitive data. Breaching compliance regulations can result in heavy fines, not to mention damaging your company’s reputation.

2. Data Masking

Another way that TDM can help you protect sensitive data is through data masking. Data masking is the process of hiding or changing certain, sensitive data elements. The purpose of data masking is to helps ensure that classified test data is not accidentally leaked.

With TDM, you can mask large quantities of data within minutes using automated data profiling and clone subsets of data, ensuring sensitive data remains secure.

3. Generating Test Data

In addition to identifying and masking the sensitive data in your system, TDM can help you generate synthetic test data that adheres to compliance regulations. This is important because it allows you to test your software without using actual production data. In other words, it allows testing teams to create realistic data tailored to their specific testing and development needs

This feature is also helpful in cases where you don’t have enough data to test with. For example, you might be developing a new feature that’s only used by a small subset of your users. In this case, it might not make sense to use actual production data to test with. TDM can help you generate the necessary test data from scratch.

4. Data Virtualization

Moreover, TDM also offers data virtualization. Data virtualization is the process of creating a virtual copy of your data. Test Data Manager allows for the rapid creation of virtual copies of large test data sets whenever needed. This ensures that each tester has their own personal copy of test data, instead of being forced to share a single copy of data which can slow down the entire development process. In short, the data virtualization feature of TDM provides testing teams with continuous access to consistent virtual data and environments so that they can stay on-pace with project timelines and delivery.

5. Data Storing and Reusing

Another way that TDM can help you streamline your testing process is by storing and reusing test data. This is beneficial because it allows teams to reuse any previously generated test data and work in parallel, eliminating the need for testers to create their own data. This is also helpful in cases where you need to run the same test multiple times.

The Benefits of Test Data Manager

Now that we’ve taken a look at what TDM can do, let’s take a look at some of the benefits it can bring to your organization. Here are some of them.

Time and Cost Savings

One of the biggest benefits of TDM is that it can help you save time and money. This is because it can help you automate your testing process. By automating your testing, you can free up your team’s time so that they can focus on other tasks.

In addition, automating your testing can also help you save money. This is because you won’t need to hire as many testers. You’ll also be able to avoid the cost of manually generating data.

Improved Quality and Efficiency

Another benefit of TDM is that it can help you improve the quality of your software. This is because TDM can help you catch errors early on in the development process by ensuring you are using the right test data which reduces defect creation. TDM can also help you improve the efficiency of your testing process through its automated features. This is because you won’t need to spend as much time setting up and running tests. In fact, some users of TDM report between 90 and 95 percent reduction in the amount of time they need for the provisioning of rich, top-notch test data.

Boost Your Software Testing with TDM

There’s no doubt that test data management is a critical part of the software development process. Test Data Manager by Broadcom Software can help you save time and money, improve the quality of your software, and improve the efficiency of your testing process. If you’re not already using TDM, now is the time to start!

Schedule a demo with A&I Solutions today to see TDM in action!