how to create test data or data set in software testing life cycle?

Question

How do tester create test data? In how many type of testing or methods of testing tester need to have or needs to create test data? where to find test data? is there any ready data set or particular testing type? how many types of data sets tester need?

tester as manual, automated and performance tester

Answer 1

There are some out-of-the-box test data generator. For Java for example you can use http://jfairy.org/

For PHP there is great https://github.com/fzaninotto/Faker

You can use it to create your own service providing random data. Both libraries are also extendable, so you can use its infrastructure to build you own test datasets

Answer 2

Test data is always specific to ur tests. Again the quantity of test data depends on the type if testing u r doing. For manual testing - mostly one flow is checked at a time, so I don't think there can be a generic test data for all manual tests. For automation testing - you may need some generic functions like random() in selenium java, which creates random number and that can be used at some place as test data. And same goes for performance testing also.

Answer 3

It depends on the project to project. It mainly the input given to the software while executing the test cases. Following are different type of input that we can give as per the project requirement

1. Valid data
2. Invalid data

Data for Test case design techniques:

1. Boundary Condition Data
2. Equivalence Partition Data Set
3. Decision Table Data Set
4. Test State Transition Test Data Set
5. Use Case Test Data

Answer 4

As a tester i've generated tons of test data online (in my browser) via https://cagy.org/test-data-generator/

Just add patterns like this and hit generate:

increment(1000);email();ccn();fname();upper(lname())

You can easily generate millions of relevant test data records and export them in various formats.

Answer 5

I would like to suggest Fakerino, could fake simple data, complex data, entities, database tables... It Also has a simple command line interface.

https://github.com/niklongstone/Fakerino

Answer 6

The general problem of test data creation and use is extremely complex (perhaps a candidate to classificationas a wicked problem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem#:~:text=In%20planning%20and%20policy%2C%20a,are%20often%20difficult%20to%20recognize.).

For any non-trivial activity, I would say addressing the problem of test data creation and use requires sitting down and explicitly conceiving a Test Data Strategy as part of your Test Plan. This should consider several factors:

1. The complexity of the data;
2. The existence of Production data, or parts of the data;
3. The confidentiality of the data, or parts of the data (or other requirements; ex: GDPR);
4. Correct and incorrect data;
5. Frequency of test execution;
6. Interference of test execution in terms of data use;
7. Time required to restore test data to its state prior to test execution;
8. Isolation of testers activities in terms of data use;
9. Cost of test data creation from scratch;

The are just a few essential topics that come to mind.

One crucial aspect is that you will not find a test strategy that will be optimal, or even good, in every scenario. The right solution, if this exists at all, much like in software architecture, is very sensitive to many factors.