St. Valentines Data Massacre
On the 81st anniversary of the legendary US gangster slaying in Lincoln Park, Chicago, it is perhaps appropriate to use the title of the massacre as an analogy to describe two of the most dangerous, but widespread practices currently taking place within QA and testing departments around the globe.
Illegally testing on live data and ignoring database accuracy!
The simple fact is this: Carrying out testing on live data without the consent of the individual whose data is being processed is illegal.
So, what can be done? Is there a way for QA staff to carry on testing with live data without leaving themselves and their organisation at risk? In short, can this ‘data massacre’ be eliminated?
Yes it can. With a clear Test Data Management (TDM) strategy in place you can ensure that you will dodge those data protection bullets, as well as being happy in the knowledge that your entire testing process is underpinned by good quality, legal test data.
Read our whitepaper the “St. Valentine’s Data Massacre” to discover in detail how using techniques such as data scrambling, roll backs and manipulation can ensure your test data isn’t compromised.
Visit The “St. Valentines Data Massacre” page in our whitepapers section to get your copy now!
NEWS: Original Software Positioned as a Visionary in Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites
Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced that it has been placed in the ‘visionaries’ quadrant by leading analyst firm Gartner, Inc. in its recently published Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites, 31 July 2009.
“The total market for test management and functional and load/stress automation is currently valued at just under $1.2 billion, and is growing at more than 8% per year.” said Thomas Murphy in the report1. “Testing software can be an expensive process, but poor software quality leads to user dissatisfaction, as well as increased development and maintenance. Therefore, having a well-defined set of tools and practices to drive software quality will positively affect the overall business bottom line.”
The report evaluates fourteen vendors of software quality solutions based on a rigorous set of criteria that comprise ‘completeness of vision’ and ‘ability to execute’. Original Software has been positioned as a visionary.
Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “We consider our positioning in the visionaries quadrant to be confirmation of the real value that our approach to solving challenges in the quality process has brought to our users, extending the reach of these solutions within an organization and providing an early return on investment. We are now expanding on the unique work we have done, in reducing script maintenance, supporting manual testing, code-free automation and test data management, with the launch of a radical new ALM solution later this year.”
This report has recently been published by Gartner. More information can be found on the analyst page of Original Software’s website.
NEWS: Original Software offers ‘Escape’ for apprehensive Borland and Compuware customers
Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced a swap-out promotion for customers of the soon to be engulfed companies, who face uncertainty in the future of their legacy product roadmaps.
Original Software offers market-leading AQM solutions that span the application development life-cycle from requirements, planning and management to complete automated regression testing, including unique solutions for and test data management.
“Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “Any customer on a current maintenance contract with Borland or Compuware can qualify for the Escape program and swap to one of our comparable solutions, provided they switch the maintenance agreement.” The promotion, which runs until the end of the year, includes preferential pricing on all the company’s other complimentary solutions.
“While MicroFocus has now completed the acquisitions of Borland and Compuware, the future for their customers is far from clear. It is inevitable that one of the solutions will take precedence, leaving the other customer base facing an unpleasant choice. You have to feel special sympathy for the users of the Borland testing products for who this is the second change of ownership in less than three years.”
“The great thing about the Escape program is that companies can remove the uncertainty about products futures and join a company whose vision has been widely recognized by industry analysts like Gartner and Ovum. At the same time they can benefit from great customer service and a modern AQM solution suite that addresses traditional automation and the now widely recognized needs for collaboration, manual test support and test data management”.
Spreading a little love - some Valentines Day themed goodies for you
Valentine’s Day activities for geeks
Great story on ComputerWorld today - http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/my-career/news-analysis/index.cfm?articleId=2066&email – includes ideas such as technology-related films to watch with your loved one onValentines, twitter love hunt events and more…
Seven reasons to love a developer on Valentine’s Day
Adrian Bridgewater’s blog on ZD Net had me chuckling this morning – I often see that deep concentration akin to the ear-crumb incident he describes…
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10012138o-2000458459b,00.htm
and finally….
The St. Valentine’s Day Data Massacre
by George Wilson, Operations Director of Original Software
On the 60th anniversary of the legendary US gangster slaying in Lincoln Park, Chicago, it is perhaps appropriate to use the title of the massacre as an analogy to describe one of the most dangerous but widespread issues currently taking place in QA and testing departments around the globe.
Testing on live data.
Industry estimates suggest that approximately 70% of IT departments admit to using live data during their application testing process. One can understand why. It makes the testing more pragmatic, gives a clearer indication of true quality and allows the application in question to be tested more thoroughly. The problem is that this can expose sensitive data to less than sensitive employees or contractors.
The acquisition of data for testing may breach the Information Security safeguards of your live system which could result in fraud, malicious damage or even legal action if confidentiality is lost.
The simple fact is this: Carrying out testing on live data without the consent of the individual whose data is being processed is illegal.
“But it can’t be. And anyway, we have security procedures in place”. Regrettably that is the attitude of many hard pressed CIOs today. Organizations demand on time delivery of tested software, and live data tends to reveal more ‘real world’ errors or so CIOs have always believed.
But that doesn’t make it legal.
Starting with the stringent Data Protection regulations in the European Community, and spreading worldwide, the law says, very clearly, that the individual whose data record is being used must know the purpose of the processing.
Common sense and good practice say that exposing traceable production data to test disciplines is risky. Despite legal requirements and in some cases severe penalties for breaking them, testing on live data still tends to be common practice. One survey showed 62 percent of companies were using live customer data to test applications and 49 percent shared this data with outsourced testers, with no way of knowing if it was ever compromised*
So, what can be done? Is there a way for QA staff to carry on testing with live data without leaving themselves and their organization at risk? In short, can this ‘data massacre’ be eliminated?
Of course it can. With a clear Test Data Management (TDM) strategy in place you can ensure that you will dodge those data protection bullets, as well as being happy in the knowledge that your entire testing process is underpinned by good quality, legal test data.
Test Data Management is fundamental to the success of your test strategy; after all, data drives the entire testing procedure. With bad data comes poor testing, results you cannot trust, and a whole lot of wasted time, money and effort, and maybe even the odd legal dispute. It pays to get data management right.
Effective test data creation will address issues of disk space, data verification, data confidentiality and protracted test durations. Control of test data ensures that every test starts with a consistent data state, essential in maintaining your data in a predictable state at the end of the test. Checking both visible test results and the database effects is a key principle of Total Testing, a task which is practically impossible to do manually.
This philosophy enables a true regression testing capability to be built and automated, without the need for complex algorithms and checks to make allowances for changing data.
Intelligent data extraction functionality dramatically simplifies the process of creating and extracting data subsets from your live database - with great efficiency and full referential integrity with no program complications. With total control to amend data during extraction, and the ability to extract data from remote sources, data maintenance becomes simple and efficient. Data integrity, for any purpose, is assured.
For more information on Test Data Management, and how Original Software can help you avoid any test data massacres, log on to www.origsoft.com
* The Insecurity of Test Data: The Unseen Crisis, - a Compuware / Ponemon Institute study
