In our previous posts I explained about Data Subset and Data Masking in TDM. In this post we will focus on Test Data Ageing.
This is useful for Time based testing. Let's assume you create a customer and it requires 48 hours for activation of that particular customer. What if you have to test the scenario that will occur after 48 hours? Will you wait till 48 hours for that scenario to happen for your testing? The answer is No. Then how will you handle this scenario?
There are basically 2 approaches by which we can do this
- Tamper the system dates
- Although it is possible in some cases to tamper the system dates and continue with the testing, this method will fail if the date is generated by a database server or an application server instead of the client.
- Tamper the dates in the backend
- This should be most viable and practical solution for such scenario. In this approach, we modify the date at the backend so that it reflects the new date. But care should be taken to ensure that data integrity doesn't get lost or the data semantics doesn't get lost.
This method of modifying the date according to the scenario needs is known as Test Data Ageing. Depending on the scenario that needs to be tested, we can either Back date or Front date the given date.
Challenges
