The test data challenge for database-driven applications

Business applications rely typically on databases for storing and processing their data (database-driven applications, or DBAPs). Testing DBAPs requires testing the application logic plus the interaction between the application logic and the database. Thus, DBAP test cases consist of input and output parameter values, the function to be tested, and an initial database state (i.e., DBAP test data). Various test data provisioning methods exist, such as manual test data design, generators for synthetic test data, and live-system snapshots. Many criteria and factors influence which method is optimal for a given project setting, such as costs, quality, data privacy, etc. This paper presents our methodology for guiding software development projects towards the DBAP test data provisioning method best suited for them

Towards Automatic Test Database Generation.

Testing is one of the most expensive and time consuming activities in the software development cycle. In order to reduce the cost and the time to market, many approa ches to automate certain testing tasks have been devised. Nevertheless, a great deal of testing is still carried out manually. This paper gives an overview of different testing scenarios and shows how database techniques (e.g., declarative specifications and logical data independence) can help to optimize the generation of test databases.Department of Computin