Any organization that aims for reliable, online deployment of database changes needs a Test Data Management (TDM) strategy that allows developers to test the database early, thoroughly, and repeatedly, with the right test data. The benefits include more resilient database deployments, fewer bugs, and shorter lead time for changes. Read more
The main reason why database deployments fail is a lack of rigorous database testing, and the main reason this task is so often avoided, or delayed, is the difficulties of creating and managing all the required test data. This article will help you understand the steps to better test data management, as part of a database emigration strategy. It explains the different types of data required and why, and the most efficient way to create, load and switch between the different required data sets. Read more
An overview of the challenges of database testing and test data management, reviewing the different types of database test that need to run during development work, what sort of test data they require, and how to manage all the required data sets, during development, in a way that allows rapid cycles of parallel testing. Read more
A generic way of exporting, deleting and loading data, for database development work. It uses Flyway Teams, a PowerShell framework, JSON files for storage and a table manifest to define the correct order of dependency for each task. It should help a team maintain datasets between database versions, as well as to switch between the datasets required to support different types of testing. Read more
If you can test and evaluate databases, and database objects, at every phase of the database development lifecycle, then you are much more likely to be able to adopt continuous delivery. The further down the delivery pipeline that bugs appear, the more costly in time and resources they are to fix. Read more
Before you get very far with database development you need to be clear about your strategy for handling data. In this article I'll explain some of these issues in general terms, and then demonstrate how you can navigate these problems easily with Flyway. Read more
How to quickly and automatically bulk load test data once Flyway Teams completes a database migration. A baseline migration script creates the empty database version, which then triggers a PowerShell callback script that bulk loads in the right version of the data. It is a very fast way to provision multiple copies of a specific database version, complete with data, for ad-hoc or automated testing. Read more
How to add test data to a SQL Server database, during Flyway development. We use SQL Data Generator to produce some "realistic but fake" data and then SQL Data Compare to produce an INSERT script that Flyway can use to load the data into a newly-built version of the database. Read more
Phil Factor provides SQL routines to extract data from and load data into a SQL Server database, using BCP, and then a PowerShell automation script that uses Flyway to automatically build a database, from scratch and then fill it with data, ready for testing. Read more