The best software development depends on robust testing. And testing requires test data that matches the real-world scenarios. Test data helps to improve the software as per the customer’s expectations. Along with that, test data best practices ensure that the software is secure, reliable, and meets compliance standards.
In a few words, without great test data, your money on developing software is at stake. And in this aspect, test data management (TDM) tools take the stage. They create, store, and manage test data efficiently. According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global test data management market was worth $1.1 billion in 2022, and it is expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2030.
In this article, we’ll talk about the best 5 TDM tools in 2024 and compare their features and benefits.
What is test data management?
Simply put, test data management means creating, managing, and keeping test data for your projects’ efficient testing. It is important because it helps QA teams to control the project data, files, and policies.
There are many benefits you can enjoy from using test data management strategies.
- The best benefit is that TDM enables QA teams to isolate the test data from production data. That means teams can avoid mixing up test data with real data.
- Teams can track bugs and other quality issues. Plus, TDM solutions can reduce the size of test data to save space and time.
- TDM can centralize your testing documents for better organization.
Stages of test data management
There are five stages of the test data management process, such as:
| Planning | QA engineers analyze the type of test data and what is required to execute it. |
| Analysis | At this stage, engineers acquire the test data. Here, the information is about data access, backups, and storage. |
| Design | Engineers finalize the data preparation strategy. Either choose synthetic data or clone the existing databases for testing. |
| Build | This stage is about implementing the plans decided in the analysis and design phases. |
| Maintenance | Quality assurance engineers monitor, update, and maintain the test data throughout the testing lifecycle. |
What are Test Data Management Tools?
TDM tools are software that help to create, provision, and handle test data for testing software. These tools make sure that there is good and realistic data in testing environments to perform the testing scenarios.
These tools have amazing functionalities, too. For example, it can generate synthetic test data, also known as anonymized test data, to simulate various cases. Furthermore, you can enjoy data masking or anonymization features in TDM tools, which help to protect PII (Personal Identifiable Information) or sensitive information.
Best 5 Test Data Management Tools list in 2024
So, let’s discuss our main concern. Here are the five best tools to compare to manage your test data:
1. GenRocket
It’s a self-service synthetic test data platform. That means what testers have to do is just create and deploy their own test data and get it on the spot to their testing automation systems.
If you want to generate structured or unstructured data, Parquet, Avro, JSON, Snowflake, flat or nested XML, SWIFT, or Kafka messages, and multiple file formats (e.g., XLS, CSV, VSAM), GenRocket has everything for you.
For synthetic test data generation, this platform distinguishes itself. Using this platform, you can generate any data in any format—an all-in-one solution.
Furthermore, this platform has a collection of 660 data generators and more than 79 data receivers, so you can choose anyone based on your demands.
GenRocket’s test data management solutions offer a simple yet effective methodology, which is:
- Model
- Design
- Deploy
- Manage
2. Testigma
Testigma is one of the amazing tools for managing test data. It has multiple benefits and features, and it is well-known for data-driven testing.
With this tool, you can use different sources to import test data without any hurdles. The sources include spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Excel) and databases.
Also, this tool can validate and assert your test data against your expected results. This ensures that your tests are accurate and reliable. You can also use Testigma’s smart assertions, such as contains, matches, and equals, to compare different types of data.
Not to mention, Testigma’s built-in features to generate dynamic and randomized test data set it apart. This way, testers can make different test cases using different data values, which helps them test more things and find potential issues with data.
The centralised dashboard of this tool helps you manage your test data as per your requirements.
3. K2View
This leading tool is best for enterprises with complex environments. It keeps the data up-to-date and changes it through data products.
With K2View, data consumers can see all the important information about the business, like devices, customers, orders, and claims. You will be astonished to know that this platform handles around 5+ billion data queries every day and gives 200ms of response time to everyone.
The best part of this tool is that it manages different tasks. For example, organising data, protecting sensitive information, creating a complete view of customers, and moving data to the cloud. These all tasks are done at a low cost and in less time.
4. Testim
Testim.io a test automation platform that uses AI. It helps with authoring and running tests, finding and fixing problems, reporting on results, keeping tests running smoothly, and more.
This platform has dynamic locators, and for that reason, it primarily focuses on, functional testing, UI testing, and end-to-end testing.
By using Testim.io, you can make test cases more reliable and easier to keep up-to-date. Plus, it lets QA teams add extra features using HTML and JavaScript if they need to.
Here are some things that testers can do when using this platform:
- Perform tests locally and in the cloud
- Integrate with CI/CD systems
- Take logs and screenshots of test runs
- Create thorough reports for each test, including charts, data, and more
5. DATPROF
Instead of being just one product, DATPROF offers a range of products that fit in with various needs in the TDM process. There are multiple benefits to using DATPROF:
- It has a centralized dashboard where users can edit, arrange, and edit data in various environments from one place
- Its compliance capabilities make it reliable and secure
- It is known as a self-service platform where testers can request the needed test data
- It works with many different database providers and integrates with various systems
- Offers free trial
Final Thoughts
Test data management tools are becoming more popular in this AI era. They help you test your software or applications to improve their performance. QA engineers can manage the test data using five stages of TDM. They include planning, analysis, design, build, and maintenance. Using TDM tools, you can generate synthetic data to simulate different scenarios and make your software better as per customers’ expectations. There are multiple open source tools in the online market, but this article covers the five best ones.
I hope you enjoyed the article. If you want to write for us for a future tech blog, you can mail us a draft.