You might be aware of what importance Database testing holds while developing efficient software.

Without proper database testing, your software can have data accuracy, reliability, and integrity issues. Additionally, the concerns of data corruption, data inconsistency, etc., may catch up pace while making that software live. Ultimately, it can create harmful consequences for your business software.

Hence, while implementing a comprehensive Software Testing Life Cycle on the project being tested, testers should focus equally on DB testing as well.

In this guide on Database testing, we will cover what, why, and how to perform Database testing. Additionally, we will also see its importance, DB testing tools, and much more.

So, let’s dive in and explore more!

What is Database Testing?

Database testing is composed of constructing different SQL queries to validate various database operations, attributes, and structures.

In this process, you can include validating the database schema, testing transactions and CRUD operations, etc., to make sure that your system’s database is set up accurately.

Database tests can be fully manual, fully automated, or have a hybrid approach using a mixture of both automated and manual processes.

For instance, if you are using manual database testing, you have to get into the DB management system to run validation queries. Or you just have to test the app UI to see if it’s returning correct information or not.

DB testers work with app developers to test the situations in which the database has to operate accurately. Being a database tester, you should fully understand the app along with its database structure.

Why to perform Database Testing?

When the integrity of the data in an app is compromised, it leads to complex monetary losses that can crumble the whole business.

The range of these situations is from the real-time value of the stock to less data-sensitive functions like the number of retweets on a tweet.

While database testing can’t prevent all the data security hazards, the worst situations can be avoided by thoroughly testing the database used in the app.

Some popular reasons for testing databases are:

• Prevent attacks like SQL injection

• Ensure the network issues do not affect the data integrity and lead to corrupted data or data loss.

• Removing errors from the DB to manage the data quality

• Verify that each data piece is stored in an accurate format

• Validating relationships of entities in the database

• Evaluating Database Transactions are accurate

Let’s learn about ACID, one of the main principles of performing Database Testing.

ACID- Understanding Why DB testing is a must

ACID means Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. To have a reliable database in your project, it’s essential to maintain the balance of these four factors. Let’s understand them in detail:

Atomicity-

It states that each Database transaction must be treated as an atomic unit. In common terms, it means every transaction should be completed or else it collapses.

Each transaction should be treated in such a way as to avoid clumsy situations of money transfer stops halfway. It sounds stressful, right? With the process of atomicity, if a transaction fails halfway, the transaction fails. So, money returns to your account easily.

Consistency-

It requires that the database remains consistent after completing a transaction. So, there should be no negative impact of the transaction on other information stored in the DB. For instance, when you withdraw money from the bank, it gets withdrawn from your account only.

Isolation-

In the digital landscape, your priority should be to prevent the twirling of data streams. Isolation guarantees that amidst multiple transactions, each interaction is provided exclusive attention within the database. This approach shields against the mixture of personal information, ensuring the security of individual data privacy.

Durability-

A reliable database has durability. It’s capable of retaining the latest transactions even in risky system failures. Consider this situation where initiating a money transfer and you see a database outage moment. Such reliability protects users from confusion and avoids the need for repeated transactions.

Different types of Database Testings

As we have covered one of the main reasons why DB testing is necessary (balance in ACID factors), let’s learn about different types of database testing.

Mainly there are three main types of database testing:

• Structural

• Non-functional

• Functional

Let’s understand each one in detail.

Structural Database Testing

Structural database testing is an essential technique in testing that holds an important role in validating elements of the database or data repository. This process tests the DB components that normal users cannot access.

These components are hidden entirely, but play some crucial role in storing data. So, database testers have to write SQL queries to perform structural testing on the database.

There are mainly three subtypes of Structural Testing:

• Database server validation

• Database Table Testing

• Data Mapping Testing

Functional Database Testing

Functional testing is used to validate the accurate operations of an app by validating its different components like tables, views, stored procedures, etc.

The main aim of functional db testing is to ensure that each aspect of an app is performing as per the user’s expectations. Moreover, it also identifies bugs and errors in an app that might create huge trouble in the beginning.

There are two main types of functional DB testing:

• White box testing

• Black box testing

Non-functional Database Testing

In this type of database testing, we mainly focus on load testing, performance testing, security testing, stress testing, and different types of testing processes whose scope is beyond the central functions.

Non-structural DB testing helps these non-functional parts of a database to meet the business objectives. There are different subtypes of non-structural DB testing, or we can say different types of tests carried out under non-structural DB testing roof:

• Load testing

• Stress testing

• Unit testing

• Compliance testing, and many more

Let’s see which tools can help us with effective Database testing.

Best Tools for Database Testing

If you are confused about which database testing tool you should pick, here are some factors to be clear with first:

• Whether you are choosing a manual, hybrid, or automated testing process

• SQL Database or No-SQL database

• DB vendor- MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc.

The majority of database testing tools are made up of more than one tool. For instance, Selenium + TestNG helps in testing Java apps; SeLite uses Selenium for testing SQLite db. Here’s the list of some most popular Database testing tools to use in 2024.

• My SQL Server

• SQLite

• Data Factory

• DbVisualizer

• MockupData

• SQL Test

• Oracle SQL Developer

• NoSQLMap

• SLOB

• Orion

• HammerDB

The list can still go on till the page ends. But not all tools are worth using. The ones mentioned above are the most popular ones that database testers prefer to use while performing the testing process.

Let’s discuss the benefits now!

Advantages of Database Testing

Here are the top benefits of database testing:

• Complex Transaction Handling: The database testing process manages huge and intricate transactions

• Speedy Testing Cycle- Testers can easily test huge data sets together. Hence, it speeds up the overall software testing life cycle

Disadvantages of Database Testing

Although database testing is important, it comes with specific cons:

• Automation costs- You have to implement automation tools whenever required, so it increases the software development budget.

• Manual testing complexity- When you implement manual DB testing, it becomes intricate because of data volume, multiple relational DBs, and complexity. It leads to challenges.

• Constant Updates- You have to continuously update the test plans for making new changes in the database. It increases efforts of maintenance

• Need for strong expertise- Testers must have in-depth knowledge of database, app functions, and needs. So, they must have relevant experience.

• Huge database handling- Search for critical errors, test that part, and solve them. These processes need to be done in a complex database. So managing it becomes tiresome.

Database Testing- How to perform?

Here are the steps of database testing:

• Define the objectives and scope of testing

• Know the resources and testing approach

• Make test cases and test plans

• Build the test environment and test data

• Run the test cases

• Evaluate the results

• Fix the issues and perform retest whenever necessary

Concluding Words

Database testing is a complex process, and only skilled testers can complete this process with satisfaction.

They can ensure you that there are no potential data corruptions, downtimes, and bad data in your system. It might happen that in the future there might be some run-time error, but they can help you with that too.

In this way, performing a database testing process helps in making your software free from bad data, and ensures its working efficiency from the database's side.