Testing Your Data Warehouse

Abstract

As with any other IT system, after you build the data warehouse with its ETL and applications, you need to test it thoroughly. You need to go through six types of testing. I’ll introduce them here with a brief description, and in the rest of the chapter I will discuss them one by one:

• ETL testing: In the ETL testing stage, you make sure that appropriate changes in the source system are captured properly and propagated correctly into the data warehouse. You also need to verify that the bulk load solution works as it was intended so it can do the initial data loading.

• Functional testing: In the functional testing stage, you make sure all the business requirements are fulfilled.

• Performance testing: In the performance testing stage, you verify that the data warehouse can handle the required load and volume.

• Security testing: In the security testing stage, you make sure only the users who should be able to access the resources can actually access them.

• User acceptance testing: In the user acceptance testing stage, the end users use the data warehouse system to verify the usability.

• End-to-end testing: In the end-to-end testing stage, you let the system run for a few days to simulate production situations.