Test Data Management
Test Data Management (TDM) is a systematic approach to creating, maintaining, and provisioning data for software testing purposes. It ensures that test environments have appropriate, high-quality, and secure data that mimics production data while protecting sensitive information. This process involves data masking, subsetting, generation, and versioning to support effective testing across development cycles.
Developers should learn TDM to improve test reliability, comply with data privacy regulations (like GDPR or HIPAA), and accelerate release cycles by reducing data-related bottlenecks. It is crucial in data-intensive applications, financial systems, healthcare software, and any scenario requiring realistic yet anonymized test datasets to validate functionality without exposing real user data.