Dynamic test data generation for data intensive applications

Abstract

There are many cases where the development and testing of data-intensive applications need to be supported without the prior existence of data. Our work presents a dynamic test data generation framework for testing such applications. This capability is important, when the data is confidential and cannot be given to the test person for security reasons or when the application is in its development phase and real data does not yet exist. The proposed solution dynamically intercepts queries made by the application under test and creates appropriate data based on user requirements. This approach does not require access to the source code of the application under test, which could also be confidential. Data generation can be controlled to achieve desired data and query result patterns, including realistic data or data with higher test quality. The paper concludes with experiments that demonstrate the coverage and performance aspects of the solution. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.