7 Best Test Data Management Tools (2024)

Test data is an important component of any software testing process.

Without proper test data, testing software and delivering quality products that meet user expectations is impossible.

Incorrect handling of test data can cause unreliable test results, leading to costly errors and delays in the software development lifecycle.

That's why you need a proper test data management tool to make sure that the data used in testing is accurate and relevant.

However, choosing the right one can be difficult, as there are so many test data management tools available on the market.

We spent 48 hours comparing the top test data management tools to help you find the best one for your testing process.

Let's get started.

What is Test Data Management?

Test data management (TDM) is the process of creating and maintaining the data sets used during software testing.

Test data sets are input values that represent what the software will face in the real world.

For example, test data for a login page includes usernames and passwords.

TDM aims to arrange the information that QA testers need to run tests efficiently, in a way that closely resembles real-world scenarios in test environments.

This ensures that each test case has access to the right data sets, available in the correct format at the right time.

Importance of Test Data Management In Software Testing

The quality of your test data directly affects the accuracy of your tests.

If the data does not reflect real-world situations, the tests might miss bugs or issues that would appear after release and leave a bad impression on users.

Here are some benefits of test data management:

• Accuracy: Random and inconsistent test data can result in flaky tests. You can catch real issues and prevent false positives with well-managed test data.
• Test Coverage: It allows testers to simulate different user behaviors and scenarios, leading to more thorough testing and increased test coverage.
• Data Quality: TDM allows the creation of realistic, updated, and well-structured data sets and subsets. This improves data quality and produces more consistent test results.
• Faster Time-to-Market: Automating the test data management process saves time and reduces the manual effort needed to prepare and maintain test data. This speeds up the overall testing process, allowing software products to reach the production stage faster.
• Compliance: TDM uses techniques like data masking to protect data during testing by hiding sensitive information. This is necessary to meet compliance standards and data privacy regulations while avoiding legal and financial risks.
• Cost-Effective: By detecting issues early on, effective TDM can save significant costs associated with bug fixes later in the development process.

7 Best Test Data Management Tools

Here's an overview of the top tools for test data management.

• K2View: Best for handling complex data environments.
• DATPROF: Centralized test data management and test data automation.
• Tosca: Automated end-to-end testing and test data management.
• Delphix: Automated data delivery and provisioning.
• AVO Automation: Intelligent test data generation.
• Informatica: Best for enterprise-level test data management.
• Broadcom Test Data Manger: Best for synthetic data generation.

K2View

K2View is a leading data management platform for handling complex business environments.

It allows QA teams to easily access data by providing precise test data subsets from various production sources, which improves data integrity.

Another great feature is its ability to create a micro-database for every business entity, which allows for highly scalable data management.

Key Features:

• It can integrate data from multiple sources, including on-premises or the cloud.
• Its powerful data orchestration features enable businesses to automate the flow and transformation of data for easy handling.
• It protects sensitive data (PII, PHI) by replacing it with non-sensitive tokens.
• You can mask data in non-production environments, including referential integrity, in-flight, contextual, static, or dynamic data masking.
• It allows users to generate and manage synthetic and compliant data for testing software.
• Integrations with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, GitHub, Azure Pipelines, and more.

Best for:

Real-time data management, integration and security for complex environments.

Pricing:

Available on request.

DATPROF

DATPROF is a specialized platform for test data management and synthetic data generation.

It offers a centralized platform with solutions for managing test data from different sources, such as data subsetting, masking, automation, and virtualization.

Key Features:

• It allows multi-database masking to mask data over multiple apps or systems.
• You can use built-in generators to create synthetic data or use your own files to create masking templates.
• It allows you to create subsets of your databases with automatic data table classification.
• Parallel processing enables the extraction of large amounts of data directly within the database for fast data creation and maintenance.
• It also offers a self-service portal for easy access control and virtualized databases to create and modify test environments.

Best for:

Automated test data management to speed up the testing process.

Pricing:

Available upon request.

Tosca

Tosca is an AI-powered test automation tool that automates end-to-end testing for software applications.

It provides features for efficient test data management, allowing users to create, manage, and reuse test data across different test cases while complying with data privacy regulations.

Key Features:

• Automated test data generation and provision on-demand (synthetic, masked, or imported) for faster testing cycles.
• End-to-end testing with dynamic data masking to remove data inconsistencies
• Its Test Data Service interface makes it easy to store, share, reuse, access, and keep track of test data across multiple platforms.
• It enables team managers to control access to data-sensitive repositories for more compliant data management.
• AI-powered automated test case generation for accessibility, API, and UI testing.
• Service visualization for comprehensive testing of integrated applications.

Best for:

Automated end-to-end testing and test data management for enterprise-level complex systems.

Pricing:

Available upon request.

Delphix

Delphix is a test data management solution that accelerates the development and testing without compromising data security and quality.

It automates data access by creating virtualized copies of databases, allowing you to quickly provision test data without requiring a large storage infrastructure.

Key Features:

• Delphix syncs your test data with real production data from multi-cloud and on-prem environments to keep it updated.
• Data masking protects sensitive data by replacing it with synthetic data in non-production environments.
• Automated test data delivery and integration into CI/CD pipelines for faster time-to-market.
• It allows users to rewind, refresh, branch data environments and version data to keep track of changes.
• Integrate with DevOps tools like Jenkins, AWS, Git, and Google Cloud.

Best for:

Multicloud data automation and compliance for agile development environments.

Pricing:

Available upon request.

AVO Automation

AVO Automation is an AI-powered test automation platform that speeds up the process of automating software testing.

It offers features and tools for no-code test creation, intelligent test automation, and test data management for end-to-end coverage of business processes and quality assurance.

Key Features:

• AVO TDM is a great tool for generating realistic test data that mimics real production data, without writing a single line of code.
• It has an intelligent algorithm that updates test data and dynamically adapts it to your test environment for more accurate testing.
• It offers self-service access to test data, with on-demand data privacy regulations.
• It helps improve compliance by identifying non-compliant data in a non-production environment.
• It also offers data discovery and security features such as data obfuscation to easily identify, manage, and secure sensitive data for personal identifiable information (PII) compliance.

Best for:

Fast and reliable test data generation and compliance with enterprise-grade scalability.

Pricing:

Available upon request.

Informatica

Informatica is a popular data management platform that offers comprehensive features for enterprise-grade TDM, data privacy, and integration.

It provides AI-powered solutions to manage and provision test data across different environments automatically.

Key Features:

• It provides strong data masking capabilities to protect any sensitive information.
• Its cloud data governance and catalog services enable organizations to discover and organize data at scale.
• It can integrate with any data in real-time across multi-cloud and on-premises data sources.
• It offers master data management (MDM) and intelligent business process automation for high-quality data and increased observability throughout the entire organization.

Best for:

Enterprise-level intelligent test data provisioning, management, and privacy.

Pricing:

Available upon request.

Broadcom Test Data Manager

Test Data Manager by Broadcom is complete solution for managing and provisioning test data for continuous testing.

It helps automate test data management, improve compliance and deliver test data faster to shorten the testing cycles.

Key Features:

• It can automatically generate synthetic data that can be reused and linked to specific test cases to save time.
• It also offers coverage analysis and data visualization for end-to-end testing.
• You can save data models and rules for later use or make virtual copies of provisioned test data for each tester on your team.
• It allows users to identify, review, and tag sensitive data using heat maps and classify it according to severity levels.

Best for:

Powerful data masking and synthetic data generation features.

Pricing:

You can contact them on their website for detailed pricing information.

Final Words

We have listed some of the best test data management tools, each with its own strengths and features.

Choose the one that best fits your specific requirements and increase the efficiency and accuracy of your testing activities.

FAQs

What are the main types of test data?

The main types of testing data are valid data, invalid data, boundary data, production, and synthetic test data.

What are the challenges associated with test data management?

Some common challenges in test data management include

• Data privacy and security concerns.
• Handling large data volumes and complex environments.
• Data quality, integrity, and consistency.
• Dealing with test data that is outdated.
• Test data provisioning and compliance with regulations.