Broadcom (CA) Test Data Manager and Blaze Data

Test Data Manager (TDM) is a test data management solution that uses data subsetting, data masking, and synthetic data generation to produce standardised, optimally covering, up-to-date, desensitised, and on-demand test data. In the process, it profiles your production data, creating an easily understood view of your data relationships and what data exists where. It’s accessed through a web portal, with guided workflows and instructional videos built-in to assist with its operation. It’s compatible with a variety of data sources, including DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and PostgreSQL, and supports both mainframe and distributed environments.

TDM readily integrates with other Broadcom products, including Agile Requirements Designer (ARD) and BlazeMeter. The latter has recently expanded significantly, and now stretches beyond just performance testing: it even offers its own synthetic data solution, BlazeData. TDM is still preferable for more complex test data management needs, while BlazeData excels at generating and delivering test data rapidly, dynamically, and at any time, up to and including test execution.

Customer Quotes

“With Test Data Manager we have evolved beyond manual processes to a powerful automated tool that can generate massive amounts of data in a very short amount of time.”
Manheim

“CA Technologies offered a compelling solution with its integrated tools that provide seamless, end-to-end
test management. In addition, CA Technologies solutions were able to manage all the technologies used across our applications, which other solutions were unable to do.”
Williams

Mutable Award: Gold 2021

TDM works by automatically building a model of your data and its environment, then leveraging that model to create test data. To wit, it will profile your data and thereby detect the relationships and sensitive data contained therein. Moreover, it will produce a variety of visualisations based on your model, including a heat map that visualises PII hotspots (see Figures 1 and 2).

Fig 02 – PII visualisation in Broadcom Test Data Manager

Data subsetting is available and supported by rules-driven data masking. Rules can be applied to either columns or tags, with over eighty masking rules provided out of the box (more can be added manually). Masking always maintains referential integrity, is fully auditable, can be applied to millions of rows in a matter of minutes either in-place or in-flight, and is demonstrably compliant with various mandates including GDPR. It can be applied to any number of environments at once, can be scheduled to run automatically, and displays a preview of the end results before committing them. You can also choose to retain your pre-masked data after the process has finished, allowing you to revert the process if necessary. If you change your mind, said data can be deleted easily.

Synthetic data generation is also available, and moreover, it is a standout feature. It relies on a user-created model of valid test data attributes that, once built, can be used to automatically generate synthetic data that achieves up to one hundred percent coverage while still being representative of your production data. This includes generating outliers, unexpected results, boundary conditions and negative paths. It is also resilient in the face of schema changes and so on.

In addition, the product is designed to make test data easily accessible. For example, you can set up self-service and automated delivery of test data to testing teams; the product will dynamically build a test data warehouse (or mart) that functions as a central library of test data that can be reused on demand; and there is a ‘find and reserve’ feature that allows you to prevent data from being modified while you’re preparing it for use as test data.

TDM can (optionally) be deployed via a Docker container, although it loses all of its subsetting and some of its synthetic data functionality in the process. That said, this pattern is highly scalable, capable of parallelising jobs across many separate instances of TDM. One client, for instance, has purportedly used this method to mask 120 billion lines of test data in a matter of hours.

BlazeData is a second test data solution within BlazeMeter, that can work either by itself or in concert with TDM. It is comparatively lightweight, both in functionality and ease of use, but notably allows you to tightly couple your test data to your functional tests. This automatically generates and delivers synthetic data to your tests on-demand and at runtime, enabling your tests to be ‘self-defining’ and data-driven. You can also import test data from TDM for use in the same fashion. There is much more to say about BlazeData, but sadly, that will have to wait for another report.

Entuity Software from Park Place Technologies, is more than just a network management solution – it is a strategic IT oTDM offers particularly mature synthetic data capabilities, including the ability to generate truly representative synthetic data sets via analysis of your production data. It also features competitive data subsetting, masking and profiling capabilities, making it an ideal solution if you want to combine synthetic data with data subsetting in a single platform. Moreover, TDM’s web portal provides a one-stop-shop for test data provisioning, while the test data warehouse, self-service, automated delivery, and find and reserve features facilitate reuse, collaboration and expedient test creation. These qualities are further enhanced by integration with ARD, itself a leading test design automation product.

BlazeData, on the other hand, provides test data management that is deeply embedded within your functional tests, with compatibility with performance tests, virtual services and more due (we are told) in only a few months. Baking your test data in at this level means that it can be created and delivered automatically and on-demand, automating it almost completely. We see this sort of all-encompassing testing as the next step in test automation, and we’re very glad to see it here.

The Bottom Line

Test Data Manager and BlazeData are each formidable, highly automated test data management solutions. The both of them together are even more so. Whether you prefer the functionality and maturity of TDM or the simplicity and ease of use of BlazeData, at least one of them – if not both – should be on your radar.perations platform. By combining network monitoring with advanced analytics, automation, business service alignment, and multi-environment support, it empowers organizations to optimize performance, align IT operations with business goals, and drive operational efficiency. It helps IT teams shift from reactive to proactive management. Its advanced event management and predictive analytics detect potential issues before they escalate, reducing downtime and improving user experiences.