Here Is All You Need To Know About Data Warehouse Testing

A data warehouse is a repository that can be accessed for analysis and decision-making and is used to hold business data. It’s a database system enhanced for managing and storing massive amounts of data, particularly at the corporate level.

To make the data accessible and manageable, this system extracts, transforms, and loads data from many sources into a data warehouse. Or convert it into meaningful information for various commercial and technological opportunities.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Due to today’s unfathomable information, data warehouse testing is more crucial than ever for businesses and professionals. Let’s examine what data warehousing testing is, its importance, and its various applications.

What Is Data Warehouse Testing?

Firms must adopt best practices for data warehouse testing as they create, move, or combine their data warehouses. Any on-premises or cloud data warehouse solution’s success depends on the execution of reliable test cases that pinpoint problems with data quality.

Data is typically loaded into a data warehouse using the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) method. The source data is extracted, modified to match the desired schema, and fed into the data warehouse. The integrity of the data processing from source to warehouse is verified through data warehouse testing. The data must also be authenticated at every point between the beginning and the endpoint.

The Importance of Data Warehouse Testing

Due to the importance of data in making crucial business decisions, validating the data warehouse integration process is crucial. According to Mckinsey Global Institute, data-driven firms are 23 times more likely to gain consumers, six times more inclined to retain existing customers, and 19 times more likely to be profitable.

There are many different sources of data. The data source determines data quality. Therefore, data profiling and cleansing must be continual. There may be gaps in source data history, business rules, or audit data.

Data goes through a pipeline before arriving at the data warehouse during testing. You must test the complete data warehouse pipeline to ensure each data type is changed or copied as expected. The data warehouse is an important strategic corporate resource.  

Understanding the Data Warehouse Testing Process

Step 1. Decide On the Needs of the Company

To test a data warehouse, you must first comprehend the business needs. The major goals here are understanding data requirements and considering data risks and dependencies.

Step 2. Verify Your Data Sources

At this stage, testers do preliminary tests on the source data, such as schema checks, counts, table validation, etc., to ensure the data warehouse process complies with the business model definition. 

Furthermore, it prevents difficulties throughout the data warehouse process, such as duplication and other concerns.

Step 3. Generate Test Cases

Testers develop test cases to verify all potential data extraction situations from the source and data storage after the data sources have been authenticated. Test cases are often written in SQL.

Step 4. Gather Data from Various Sources

This step involves extracting data from the sources. Test engineers conduct test cases to ensure no bugs exist in the source data and the extracted data is complete and accurate.

Step 5. Transforming the Data

This step transforms the data into an appropriate format for the target system. Testers ensure the modified data conforms to the destination data warehouse’s schema. Furthermore, testers examine the data flow, threshold, and alignment.

Step 6. Prepare the Data for Loading into the Warehouse

Testers tally the records once the data has been loaded into the data warehouse to verify that all data has been transferred from the source to the data warehouse. Any erroneous data is disregarded, and the material is examined for duplication and truncation.

Step 7. Creating Test Reports

To assist decision-makers in understanding the specifics and outcomes of the test, all findings and results from the tests are recorded in the test report.

Significant Benefits of Data Warehouse Testing

• Helps Identify Source Data Issues

Before the source data is loaded into the shared repository, the data warehouse protocol assists testers in identifying its issues through data warehouse testing.

• Helps Boost Data Quality

No vulnerabilities enter the database system because data warehouse testing guarantees the elimination of bugs from the source data. This testing procedure guarantees the data’s accuracy, consistency, and integrity and eventually improves the data quality.

• Ensures That No Data Is Lost or Duplicated

Another advantage of testing is that it ensures that no data is lost or truncated due to incorrect field lengths or other problems when data is entered into the data warehouse.

• Allows Transfer of Bulk Data

Through data warehouse testing, bulk data transfer happens reliably, and the process has no truncations or discrepancies.

Challenges Testers Face When Testing Data Warehouses

• While testing a data warehouse, there is a possibility of data loss
• Erratic testing environment
• Inaccurate or incomplete data, or both
• Data warehouse testing is challenging due to a significant amount of historical data.
• Difficulty in obtaining precise or useful test data
• Testing data warehouses is challenging due to a need for more SQL coding knowledge.

Conclusion

Data warehouse testing is essential to guarantee the accuracy of the information for the finest outcomes. Given the growing data quantities and highly complex data structures, you must have a comprehensive data warehousing testing strategy and efficient tools to overcome the obstacles and problems.

With the expanding data amounts and increasingly complex data structures, you need a data warehousing testing strategy and practical tools to solve the challenges. The testing must be thorough and narrowly targeted since the data’s integrity and completeness are crucial. The tester can significantly contribute to the success of a Data Warehouse project with the correct approaches and tools.