Testing challenges in etl testing process

ETL testing challenges are listed below:

The ETL tool testing is quite different from conventional/regular web based testing. There are many challenges one would face while doing data warehouse/ETL testing. ETL Testing training helps to gain knowledge in depth. Here are the list of few ETL testing challenges experienced by most of the individuals in regular projects.

1. Incompatible and duplicate data often annoys the testers.

2. Loss of data during ETL process keeps irritated the testers with finding what is the missed part of data.

3. Unavailability of inclusive test bed.

4. The testers have no privileges to execute ETL jobs by their own sometimes due to lack of knowledge on ETL jobs for testers and hence they have to wait for Developers to start the jobs.

5. Volume and complexity of data is very huge. Yes, this is the more difficulty for tester to determine how much volume of data to be verified for particular job.

6. Fault in business process and procedures causes delay in testing process.

7. Trouble acquiring and building test data since this requires lot of efforts before actual testing starts and testers do have much idea on what kind of data to be inserted into tables for tesing.

8. Missing business flow information causes delay in both development and testing as it is the crucial area of the system.

9. unstable testing environments causes huge delay in dev and testing the process.

The data is important for businesses to make the critical business decisions. ETL testing plays a significant role validating and ensuring that the business information is exact, consistent and reliable and this is where the testing plays crucial role in validating the data. Also, it minimizes hazard of data loss in production.

Hope these tips will help ensure your ETL process is accurate and the data warehouse build by this is a competitive advantage for your business.


It is not limited to the above said points and anyone can add their own challenges related to ETL/Data warehousing testing.