Testing BI and ETL Applications with manual and automation approach

Testing BI and ETL Applications with manual and automation approachA comprehensive guide for Business Intelligence project evaluation

The feasible readers: Application Business users, Analytics Users, Business analysts, BI Pms, Technical leads, BI/ETL developers, Testing team, QA/Test managers, BI Programme managers. Any IT professional who would like to learn the BI projects process.

The BI Projects are heart of the any business organization. The IT departments need to struggle a lot to bring them into a good shape by spending thousands of man days efforts towards data validation, cleansing, transforming, consolidating and presenting to the users.

At the same tome the BI Project evaluation for its implementation is a challenge to any IT organization. The resources should be well understood on its activities by collecting latest information. They also need to work in collaboration with the technical teams by understanding the latest design and development requirements. At the same time they need to confirm with the users on their understanding of the latest requirements before stepping into the evaluation process. This activity denotes lot of resource educations is required for BI Projects evaluation.

One might get the following questions also into their mind:

What kind of techniques can be used for data transformation?

Why do you need to evaluate thoroughly the BI applications?

Why do you need a Big Bang kind of test coverage for BI Projects?

Why do you need different environments for BI Projects?

What kind of testing is involved?

Is there any test automation process involved for BI projects?

If you are nominated as a business representative to certify the ETL/BI Application; you might ask some of the following questions.

i) Is the appropriate data being extracted?

ii) If the source data element is split into multiple columns, is it done correctly during the transformation process?

iii) If some data elements are merged together did any integrity problems result from this transformation process?

iv) Is the data loaded correctly into the appropriate BI target databases and the appropriate BI tables?

v) Can the data in the BI target databases be reconciled with the source files and source databases? Where are the reconciliation totals stored?

vi) Are data values correctly transformed and cleansed? Is bad data slipping through without notice?

vii) Is the load performance adequate? And is the BI data available to the business people when they expect it?

For all the above test scenarios; this E-Book can denote the solutions to follow.

By considering the above clarifications or questions; with my past work experiences on these kind of projects I have made this E-Book to understand the Data warehouse concepts, the development activities and the feasible testing methodology need to be used for applying the evaluation procedure along with the automated testing procedures.

After going through this book with clear understanding on it, any BI professional can be ready to step into the BI project evaluation confidently. And he/she can demonstrate the performance well on DW/ETL/BI Projects phases to deliver the quality systems for the business usage.