Redgate today added a Redgate Test Data Management (TDM) tool that automates the pulling of masked test data from databases running in production environments.

David Gummer, chief product officer for Redgate, said this capability eliminates manual tasks that previously inhibited testing or resulted in personally identifiable information (PPI) being inadvertently used to test applications.

Redgate TDM automatically classifies and masks data residing in SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL or Oracle database before it is used to test an application. It then produces a copy or clone of that data that is a fraction the size of the original, said Gummer.

That approach creates a repeatable process for DevOps teams that can withstand a regulatory audit of application development processes, he added. In fact, with the increased focus on software supply chain issues, more auditors are specifically reviewing how data is secured during the application development process.

Designed to be invoked via a command line interface (CLI), within an integrated development environment or via a graphical interface, Redgate TDM reduces the friction that currently occurs when DevOps teams request test data from database administrators (DBAs), said Gummer. Many DBAs are either too busy to fulfill those requests or reluctant to provide access to sensitive data that would result in the organization running afoul of a compliance mandate.

Developers then often resort to using anonymous data that doesn’t actually reflect the environment in which their application will ultimately be deployed.

The amount of data that developers need to build applications is only going to increase. In the absence of any way to effectively automate the process of accessing that data, it ultimately takes longer to build and deploy stable applications. In many cases, applications are simply not tested as thoroughly as they should be before being deployed in a production environment, resulting in rollbacks that might otherwise be avoidable.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are making it easier to create test scripts, but much of the testing setup process is still based on manual processes that increase the overall level of toil.

At a time when more organizations than ever are trying to increase developer productivity, automating relatively mundane tasks such as pulling test data can have a big impact. Developers want to spend as much time as possible focused on writing code. Everything else is a task that gets in the way of achieving that goal. While there is a general desire to empower developers, that doesn’t necessarily mean they want the cognitive load associated with building applications to increase. In fact, one of the reasons platform engineering has emerged as a methodology for managing DevOps workflows at scale is to reduce the current level of cognitive load developers experience today.

Of course, DevOps teams are, by their nature, ruthlessly committed to automating as many processes as possible. The challenge is bottlenecks in those processes conspire to slow down the overall rate at which applications can be built and deployed despite the best intentions of all involved.