Test Data Management Tools Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best data management tools that I’ll cover in this article.
Effective software testing requires high-quality data. But this isn’t always easy to manage, with 43% of testing teams saying handling data and test environments is very challenging. The best test data management (TDM) tools can help. They collect and organize data in a way that enables you to test new products and gather feedback quickly and compliantly.
This article will go into detail about how test data management tools can help your development team, as well as highlight some of my favorite tools.
What are Test Data Management Tools?
Test data management tools are software applications used in quality assurance (QA) to manage the data required for testing applications. These tools help to create, manipulate, and maintain the data used in test scenarios. Test data management tools can generate test data sets, ensure that test data is kept up-to-date, and manage the various versions of data required for different testing environments.
Test data management tools can also automate the data creation and maintenance process, and allow for the easy sharing of data among team members. These tools are essential in ensuring that testing is conducted accurately and efficiently, and can help to reduce the time and resources required for testing.
How I Selected the Best Test Data Management Tools
If you're wondering how I selected the best test data management tools, here's where I'll break it all down for you. First of all, I started with test data management tools that have high user review and satisfaction ratings. Then, using my experience in QA testing, I discerned what key criteria were most important for test data management tools and compared how each of them stacked up against the rest.
I empathize with how much time it takes to source the right software for a job. I do this work so that you don't have to. I've been using and reviewing test data management tools for years so you can trust me to do the heavy lifting and compile all the facts you need to make your final decision.
If you have more general questions about test data management strategy, you can skip to our FAQ at the bottom of the page. Or, you can jump right to the best test data management toolsoverviews if you're ready to start comparing.
Selection Criteria
After careful consideration, I've determined that these are the most important criteria when selecting the best test data management tools. Here's a brief list outlining the whats and whys of my selection.
User Interface (UI):
A good user interface makes a test data management tool a pleasure to use. This is important when it comes to creating data sets and viewing reports. Key features should be easy to find, menus should be easy to navigate, and test data should be easy to sort and manage.
Usability:
Good usability means that anyone on your team, from new developers to team leads, can use the test data management tool without issue. I also looked for tools with responsive customer support, self help resources, and training options.
Integrations:
I looked for a test data management tool that integrates with the other tools your development team uses on a day to day basis. For example, Jira, Azure, and CI/CD tools.
Pricing:
Each test data management tool will have a unique pricing structure that may include monthly subscription costs, add on costs, per-user costs, or data volume costs. I tried to pick a variety of options with scalable pricing that could potentially fit everything from startups to enterprises.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Test Data Management Tools
Here’s a brief description of each of the best test data management tools. I’ve showcased each one’s standout features as well as who I think they’re a great choice for. You’ll also see a screenshot that will give you an idea of how the tool looks.
K2View Test Data Management
Best for enterprises with complex environments
The K2View Test Data Management solution quickly provisions test data subsets from production sources with referential integrity, regardless of the number of systems, their respective technologies, and the number of testing environments. The solution can be embedded in a DevOps CI/CD pipeline, enabling Shift-Left Testing.
Testers use the solution’s self-service portal to define their desired test data sets. For example, a tester could request to provision test data related to 200 customers in a certain zip code, with 2 or more children, and an outstanding debt greater than a specific amount.
In-flight data masking protects sensitive PII data before it is delivered. Other features include synthetic test data manufacturing with referential integrity, roll-back test data version, reserve test data subsets for specific testers, and more.
Admins and testers use the web-based GUI to schedule test data requests, track execution status, results, and more.
Contact the K2View team via the website for a free demo or POC.
Tricentis Tosca
Best for AI-powered testing
Tricentis’s qTest module is designed to centralize and organize software testing throughout the development lifecycle. The tool allows you to reach automation rates of 90% end-to-end, freeing up some testing time for your team. Tricentis is easy to implement within your workflow, and offers online courses to assist in the training of your team. Tricentis provides the ability to create automated test cases with no scripting involved, which allows any member of your team to write test cases. The tool is used for both UI and API automation, which means all bases of your development lifecycle are covered. Tricentris is CI/CD supported, and provides cross browser support.Tricentris integrates with tools such as Azure, Jenkins, Jira and Cucumber. Tricentris offers customized pricing upon request. The tool also offers a free trial.
Kualitee
Best for issue & bug tracking
Kaulitee is a software testing tool with plenty of built-in features and an easy-to-use interface.
It’s easy to create test repositories and these are reusable across different team members and projects, with the ability to restructure the data for each one. It also has a built-in defect management tool that helps you track issues within your product.
You can use Kualitee during testing or as a stand-alone tool for tracking bugs. And if you find a problem, it’s easy to trace issues throughout the testing process to help determine its impact. The tool has powerful analytics and reporting so you can monitor the health of projects. You can even track this on the go with the Kualitee mobile app.
Kualitee offers both cloud and on-premise solutions. The cloud solution costs $15/user/month with a 10% discount for paying annually. You can also get a 7-day trial to test out the software.
DATPROF
Best for managing different test data environments from a central location
Datprof is a suite of test data management tools including solutions for data masking, subsetting, discovery, and test automation.
The data subsetting feature is useful. It makes it easy for teams to generate suitably sized data subsets—ones that are small enough to save infrastructure costs while still being large enough to provide accurate results.
The tool also has an algorithm that helps you select the correct data when building templates. And the synchronization wizard makes updating and maintaining templates to fit changing needs easy.
Another benefit of Datprof is the self-service portal. This gives each user their own non-production environment they can use to access data sets. Meanwhile, managers can monitor and manage software test data across multiple environments from a single location.
Datprof doesn’t advertise pricing but you can contact the team for a quote via the website.
BMC Compuware
Best for immediate testing
BMC Compuware Topaz for Total Test is a testing tool that aims to help developers save time and release products and updates faster. Developers of all skill levels can use the tool to test changes immediately after updating to ensure errors aren’t introduced into the product codebase.
A cool feature is the ability to run tests that only relate to changed programs rather than the entire product. This saves mainframe resources and speeds up the testing process. You can even automate tests whenever a developer promotes a change, so they occur immediately after an update.
The tool also supports non-virtualized testing. You can test changes using real data and subsystems to cover all potential future scenarios. Test results from virtualized and non-virtualized tests can be captured in a single report for easy access.
To discover pricing information, contact BMC via the website.
Avo Test Data Management
Best for rapid and reliable test data generation
Avo’s intelligent Test Data Management (iTDM) enables you to generate production-like, AI-ML-based synthetic test data without writing a single line of code. With all the test data creation efforts reduced to a few clicks, iTDM fast-forwards the entire testing process and application delivery.
iTDM is built and deployed on open-source technologies and container frameworks. It offers data discovery to identify and manage personal identifiable information (PPI) automatically. It also helps secure sensitive data for PII compliance through data obfuscation. Provisioning, analysis, and searching are also core capabilities.
iTDM assists you in identifying non-compliant data in non-production environments and provide only relevant data downstream. It also improves compliance by helping you keep pace with evolving data privacy regulations.
With iTDM’s reliable and relevant test data, you can build top-quality applications faster and with minimal effort.
Avo iTDM offers custom pricing details upon request.
IBM Test Data Management
Best for rapid data generation
IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management automates and optimizes test data management processes for faster testing. Central to this is the tool’s rapid data generation. The tool can then identify problems that reduce the chance of problem data leading to application failure.
You can use the tool to create optimally sized datasets so you can test without using unnecessary resources. It also has powerful masking functionality that removes sensitive data such as credit card numbers and contact information from cloned datasets, while keeping its relational integrity.
You can contact IBM via the website for further pricing information.
Informatica
Best for enterprise testing
Informatica’s test data product is designed to provide development teams with the data they need securely. The tool helps teams discover and create data subsets to use for testing. You can provision smaller data sets to avoid overburdening infrastructure and improve the speed of tests.
It also helps test teams achieve compliance at scale by masking data to remove any sensitive information. I like the powerful monitoring and reporting features that help leaders manage data sets to ensure compliance.
Informatica pricing depends on your needs. Contact the company via its website for more information.
TestValet
Best for creating optimized test schedules
TestValet is a web based test management suite that aims to solve software engineering challenges and provide your team with the means to ensure full test coverage of your applications. The tool manages test cases covering everything from performance testing to penetration testing. TestValet creates scalable test schedules, allowing you and your team to plan your test cases and methods. The tool also offers you to track your assets with calibration data alignment. You can also generate reports so you can assess the metrics of your test cases and performance. Their Test Request module allows you to capture key parameters required in a new test environment and create metadata inside GUIs. TestValet offers customized pricing upon request. The platform also offers a free demo.
Microfocus Data Express
Best for saving test resources
Microfocus Data Express is a test data environment management tool. It automatically generates test environments to help you get started at speed.
The tool also has powerful masking features to ensure that you can hide sensitive information while keeping relationality intact. You can even associate differently-named fields from multiple data sources under a common class.
A key part of the tool is that it minimizes bandwidth, storage, and processing consumption. This reduces system pressure while still providing your testing teams with the test data sets they need.
Pricing for Data Express depends on usage. Contact the company for more information.
Need expert help selecting the right Testing Software?
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10 Best Test Data Management Tools Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  K2View Test Data Management Best for enterprises with complex environments | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 2 | Tricentis Tosca Best for AI-powered testing | Free trial available | Starts at $29/month | Visit Website |
| 3 | Kualitee Best for issue & bug tracking | 7-day free trial | From $15/user/month | Visit Website |
| 4 | DATPROF Best for managing different test data environments from a central location | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 5 |  BMC Compuware Best for immediate testing | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 6 |  Avo Test Data Management Best for rapid and reliable test data generation | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 7 |  IBM Test Data Management Best for rapid data generation | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 8 |  Informatica Best for enterprise testing | 30-day free trial | Pricing available upon request | Visit Website |
| 9 |  TestValet Best for creating optimized test schedules | Free Demo | Customized pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 10 |  Microfocus Data Express Best for saving test resources | Not available | Visit Website |
Other Best Test Data Management Options
None of the tools on the list above catch your eye? Then maybe some of the options below will.
- Tricentis - Best for AI-powered testing
- TestValet - Best for creating optimized test schedules
- Test Data Automation - Best for automatically generated test data
- QA touch - Best solution with a free pricing level
- Delphix - Best for companies with many data sources
Check This Out: 10 BEST BUG TRACKING SOFTWARE
People Also Ask
While writing this article, I thought of a few questions I wanted to answer about test data management and test data management tools. If that's of interest to you, keep reading!
What is Test Data Management?
Test data management is the process of creating realistic data to use for software development and testing. The idea is that the data has similar properties to real data, but doesn’t include sensitive information that could lead to compliance issues. You can also generate smaller samples to speed up the testing process.
What are Major Test Data Management Challenges?
These solutions aim to overcome several test data management challenges. The first issues are data quality and quantity: you need a way to not only generate sufficient data but also ensure it accurately reflects the type of data your product will interact with in real life.
Then there are compliance issues: you need a way to mask sensitive customer information so testing teams can use it without breaking privacy regulations. Another issue is that application testing is resource-intensive. The tools on this list enable you to create optimally sized subsets and only run tests on changed code.
If you're still in the "need to gather more test data" phase, try: 10 Best Usability Testing Tools for Real User Feedback.
What are Test Data Management Software Key Features?
Most of the test data management solutions on this list have several key features in common. These are the things that you should be looking for when choosing test data management software.
- Data masking: Data masking removes sensitive information such as contact or payment details from production data, making it suitable for sharing with testing teams. This ensures you stay compliant with global data privacy regulations such as GDPR.
- Targeted testing: Testing entire products is resource heavy. Look for products that allow you to test only the sections of code that have been changed. This saves resources while speeding up testing.
- Intelligently sized datasets: The best test data management software can create datasets that are large enough to generate results but not so large so that it blocks all your resources.
- Reusable data: Some tools allow you to save time by reusing datasets. You can edit parameters to make the data suitable for each test. This saves you from having to generate new datasets each time you want to run a test.
- Synthetic data: Synthetic data generation produces "dummy data" that can be used for testing applications.
- Database cloning: Create a point-in-time copy of a database so that you can return to it if anything goes wrong.
- Data profiling: Check and clean your test data for higher quality results.
- Test data virtualization: Creating and managing simulated test data in a virtual environment to enable more efficient and effective software testing.
- Open source: Though optional, some testers prefer working with open source tdm tools. Test data management tools with open source options are highlighted above where relevant.
If you can’t see the features you want above, check out our article on the best test management software, which may have more suitable tools.
What Other Test Management Resources Do I Need?
If you're looking for test data management apps, you might also enjoy these strategy resources and additional tool lists:
- What Are Test Management Tools? 6 Key Features
- 10 Best Test Case Management Software
- 10 Best Free Test Management Tools
- 10 Best Test Management Tools For Jira
Test Data Management Tools: Essential for Testing
Test data is essential for releasing products. The right data management tool provides your teams with the data they need to effectively test their products—all while adhering to global privacy regulations.
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