Database Software Testing

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Database Software Testing

In this article, I am going to discuss Database Software Testing. Please read our previous article, where we discussed Beta Software Testing. At the end of this article, you will understand the following important pointers which are related to Database Software Testing.

1. What is Database Software Testing?
2. Why Is It Necessary to Do Database Testing?
3. What do Database Tests Aim to Accomplish?
4. Explain the Database Testing Attributes
5. Explain the Database Software Testing Process
6. What Part Does Automation Play in Testing Databases?
7. Explain Types of Database Testing
8. Explain the Tools Used in Database Testing
9. What Misconceptions are Related to Database Testing?
10. What are the Advantages of Database Software Testing?
11. What are the Disadvantages of Database Software Testing?

What is Database Software Testing?

A sort of software testing called database testing examines the structure, tables, triggers, and other components of the database that is being tested. Complex queries must be designed in order to load or stress test the database and evaluate its response.

It verifies the consistency and integrity of the data. The User Interface (UI) layer, the business layer, the data access layer, and the database are typically all layers in the process of database testing.

A subset of software testing known as database testing examines the database under the test’s schema, tables, triggers, etc. Additionally, consistency and data integrity are checked. To load/stress test the database and evaluate its responsiveness, it can be necessary to create sophisticated queries.

Why Is It Necessary to Do Database Testing?

We could ensure the database’s effectiveness, greatest stability, performance, and security if we did the database testing. And occasionally, these functionalities can be turned off to validate that the software is stable before being introduced into a hostile environment. We need a foundational understanding of SQL in order to do database testing.

What do Database Tests Aim to Accomplish?

Making ensuring the various aspects are followed is the major goal of database testing.

Properties of an ACID Transaction

The ACID characteristics of the transaction will be guaranteed by database testing. A database carries out all four ACID properties. An ACID has the following characteristics:

• Atomicity
• Consistency
• Isolation
• Durability

Atomicity

• The term “atomicity” in transaction specifics refers to the fact that the data remains atomic, suggesting that any operations on the data should either be executed or implemented totally or not at all.
• Another name for it is All-or-Nothing.

Consistency

• Consistency refers to the requirement that value always be maintained in the transaction once it has been completed.
• The database maintains consistency before and after the transaction since the integrity of the data is crucial. The information should always be accurate.

Isolation

• The phrase isolation in a transaction refers to separation, which specifies that many transactions may execute simultaneously without interfering with one another or altering the state of the database.
• Or consistency should be maintained if multiple transactions happen at once.

Durability

• The word durability ensures something’s permanence, which further means that once a transaction is made, it will maintain the changes without fail, regardless of the impact of outside variables.
• Additionally, the data should be sufficiently resilient to continue existing even if the system crashes.

Data Mapping

Data mapping is a crucial component of database testing, primarily concerned with confirming the accuracy of the data transferred back and forth between the application and the backend database. Here are a few of the crucial elements that were examined during the data mapping:

• We examine whether the equivalent fields in the database table are consistently mapped with the user interface or front-end techniques.
• Typically, the requirements documents include this mapping information.
• An analogous Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete [CRUD] activity is employed at the back end of an application whenever a specific action is performed at the front end.
• The test engineer will next need to determine whether the right activity was used and whether the user action was effective or not.

The Accuracy of Business Rules

• Since we know that sophisticated databases result in complex components like stored procedure triggers and relational constraints, database testing verifies the veracity of the business rules.
• The test engineer will therefore develop the proper SQL commands to validate the complicated objects.

Data Reliability

• The database testing also ensures data integrity and updates and that all forms and displays should display the most recent values of shared data.
• Additionally, the status can be updated concurrently if the value shouldn’t be changed on one screen while showing an older value on another.

Explain the Database Testing Attributes

• Transactions: The access and retrieval of data are referred to as transactions. Therefore, it is important to observe the ACID properties during transaction procedures.
• Schema for databases: It has to do with how the data in the database is organized, either by design or structure.
• Triggers: A trigger is automatically told to run when a specific event takes place in a specific table.
• Procedures: A set of statements or functions that control database transactions.

Explain the Database Software Testing Process

The database testing process consists of the following phases:

• Test Environment Setup: Setting up the testing environment is the first step in the database testing process since it allows for the execution of a high-quality testing process.
• Generation of Test Scenarios: Following the setup of the test environment, test cases are created for carrying out the test. The test scenario includes several inputs and database-related transactions.
• Execution: The testing process’ central phase, during which the testing is carried out, is called execution. Basically, it has to do with running the test cases created for the testing process.
• Analysis: Following the completion of the execution phase, the entire process and the results are examined. It is examined to see whether the testing procedure was carried out correctly.
• Log defects: Another name for log flaws in report submission. During this final phase, the tester notifies the developer of any bugs detected in the system’s database.

What Part Does Automation Play in Testing Databases?

Automation testing is used in software testing to reduce tedious manual effort, allowing the test engineer to concentrate more on important features. The same is true for database testing. Here are a few situations where test engineers might benefit greatly from automation:

• Changes To The Database Schema: The database needs to be thoroughly tested after each schema change to ensure everything works as it should. Additionally, the size of the database will determine how many scenarios must be covered. If we had to execute this process by hand, it would take a long time.
• Monitoring For Problems with Data Integrity: A situation could arise where a batch of data becomes corrupted during recovery or other processes as a result of human error or other problems. However, if we take into account automated monitoring procedures, it is now simpler to discover these deviations, and we can quickly repair them.
• Applications That Are Novel or Constantly Modified: As we all know, the Agile methodology is the new era of testing. With every sprint ending in a new release to production, one round of testing must be finished every two to three weeks. However, we may concentrate on new updated requirements with the aid of automation features, which have remained entirely consistent and untouched in the most recent sprint.

Explain Types of Database Testing.

The three categories into which database testing is divided are as follows:

Structural Testing

1. It is a vital database testing method used to ensure that all the data repository components mostly used for data storage and cannot be directly managed by end users are working as intended.
2. We must fully comprehend SQL commands if we are to pass this testing successfully.
3. We can test the hidden database elements from users during structural database testing.
4. Most crucially, structural database testing is utilized to verify the database.

Functional Testing

1. Functional database testing, which is used to validate a database’s functional requirements from the end user’s interpretation, is the most significant database testing methodology.
2. The primary objective of functional database testing is to ascertain whether end-user operations and transactions connected to the database run as expected.

Non-Functional Testing

Non-functional testing can be classified into a number of categories when discussing database testing, depending on the importance of the business needs. The following is a list of some crucial non-functional testing components:

1. Load Test
2. Stress Testing
3. Security Testing
4. Usability Testing
5. Compatibility Testing

Explain the Tools Used in Database Testing

There are many database testing tools on the market, but in this article, we’ll talk about some of the ones that are most frequently used for automation. They are as follows:

Data Factory

• The data factory is one of the most widely used database testing technologies.
• A data factory tool can test an enormous project because it is typically used for commercial database testing solutions.
• In the context of database testing, it functions as both a data generator and a data manager.
• It is the most effective tool for managing complex commands with a lot of data.
• Thanks to this program, we now have a platform that makes it simple to test the database under stress or under demand.

SQL Test

• The SQL test is the most popular database testing tool on the market today.
• Because it is an open-source tool, every Database test engineer can utilize the tSQLt framework at least once.
• It enables us to run the SQL Server database unit tests.
• This program makes it simple to carry out comprehensive SQL tests.
• This tool’s main flaw is that it performs slowly in comparison to other database testing tools available on the market.

Mockup Data

• The test data generator category also includes the commercial testing tool known as mockup data.
• We must add columns to the table to validate the outputs in this tool.
• It enables us to generate enormous amounts of data, accurate databases, and CSV files.
• It quickly generates a sizable amount of data and checks the relationships between foreign keys in numerous tables.

MS SQL Server

• A lot of unit testing is done using the Microsoft SQL server tool.
• The test engineer is expected to be familiar with the project schema before beginning the test because it is a commercial tool that allows us to generate VB or C# projects.
• We can use SQL Server Object Explorer despite the fact that we are developing the tests from a database project.
• This tool’s lack of an effective user interface is its biggest drawback.

DbUnit

• It is a free and open-source application, also referred to as the JUnit extension.
• It enables us to work with huge databases and import and export data to and from XML datasets.
• It doesn’t perform any additional cleaning because it first performs the CLEAN-INSERT process.
• We can explore the data and connect relational and multidimensional databases with the aid of the DBUnit tool.

What Misconceptions are Related to Database Testing?

• Testing databases calls for expertise.
• Database testing takes a long time.
• The result is more work bottlenecks.
• It slows down the development process as a whole.
• It is a very expensive operation.

What are the Advantages of Database Software Testing?

Software testing is not complete without database testing, which has several benefits for assuring stable and dependable systems.

1. Verifies the database’s data’s integrity, accuracy, and dependability; this prevents data corruption and upholds data quality.
2. Data Security: Assures that permissions and access restrictions are properly enforced, protecting private data from unauthorized access.
3. Performance optimization improves query efficiency and overall system performance by locating and fixing performance bottlenecks.
4. Error detection: Verifies data storage and retrieval processes, identifying and fixing database faults or abnormalities.
5. Supports regression testing, which verifies that changes don’t negatively affect current data or functionality.

What are the Disadvantages of Database Software Testing?

The drawbacks of Database Testing are:

1. Complexity: It isn’t easy to handle and maintain database testing because it involves intricate queries, intricate data structures, and big datasets.
2. Costly: Significant hardware and software expenses are needed to set up and maintain a reliable database testing environment.
3. Data security and privacy issues can arise while testing with real data, needing careful management and anonymization.
4. Integration concerns: Databases frequently interact with a variety of applications, which could cause issues during testing.
5. Comprehensive database testing might take a long time, delaying the overall development and deployment process.

In the next article, I am going to discuss Mainframe Software Testing. Here, in this article, I try to explain Database Software Testing. I hope you enjoy this Database Software Testing article.