S12-304: Data Warehouse Test Automation For Sapient Testers

Track: Test Automation

This session will suggest a test approach that allows sapient testers to write automated data warehouse tests. These tests can be used to perform computer-aided exploratory testing and regression testing.

This approach comes from Eric’s personal experience after joining a BI team and learning to test a new data warehouse at Turner Broadcasting. It turns out, data warehouses, with their lack of UI or complex business work flows, are excellent candidates for test automation.

Most of their automated tests are based on two “test templates”, written in C# by a team member. The beauty of this solution stems from the simplicity of the tests. A tester with no C# knowledge can write SQL statements and insert them into a renamed copy of the test template.

Take aways include:

  • Inspiration to help sapient testers write automated tests.
  • Understanding two automated tests that can form the foundation of a data warehouse regression test suite. These can be written in a language of your choice by a tester or programmer on your team.
  • Learning how to use said tests for computer-aided exploratory testing of a data warehouse.
  • Additional data warehouse test automation ideas.
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Session Speaker:

Eric JacobsonEric Jacobson – QA Manager, Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc.
Quality assurance manager for Turner Broadcasting System’s Audience & Multi-Platform Technologies (AMPT) group, Eric Jacobson manages the test team responsible for Turner’s sales data warehouse and its traffic system. Previously, Eric was a test lead at Turner Broadcasting, responsible for testing the new traffic system that schedules all commercials and programming on Turner’s ten domestic cable networks, including CNN, TNT, TBS, and Cartoon Network. Prior to joining TBS, Eric was a tester at Lucent Technologies. In 2007, Eric joined the tester blogosphere, where he has been blogging about testing on www.testthisblog.com every week since.