Big Data Testing : What You Need To Know

When data mining and handling techniques are not useful and are unable to expose the
insights of large data, unstructured data or time-sensitive data, another aspect is used
which is new to the realm of software industries.

This approach is known as big data that uses intense parallelism. Big data is embraced
by many companies that involve in-depth testing procedures.

What is Big Data?

Big data can be referred to a huge volume of structured and unstructured data that’s
accumulating in businesses on a daily basis.

It cannot be easily processed using the same old methods of extracting information
because most of the data is unstructured.

Using various tools and testing frameworks, big data can be analyzed for insights and
helps business to make better business strategies and decisions.

Big Data Testing

Big data testing can be referred to the successful verification of processed data by
simply using commodity cluster computing and other essential components.

It is the verification of processing data rather than testing the specification of any
application.

Testing of big data requires a set of high testing skills as the processing can be very
fast and it mainly depends on two valuable key for testing, i.e. performance and
functional testing.

Essential Necessities In Big Data Testing

Big data testing needs some aspects to run tests smoothly. Thus, below is the list of
following needs and challenges which makes it vital for big data applications to run
their tests smoothly.

 Multiple Sources for Information: For the business to have a

considerable amount of clean and reliable data, the data should be integrated
 from multiple sources. With the help of multiple sources of information from
different data, it has become easier to integrate this information. This can only
be ensured if the testing of the integrators and data sources is done through
end-to-end testing.
 Rapid collection of Data and its Deployment: Data should be collected
and deployed simultaneously to push the business’s capabilities to adopt
instant data collection solutions. Also, with the help of predictive analytics
and the support of taking quick decisive actions, it has brought a significant
impact on business by embracing these solutions of large data sets.
 Real-Time Scalability Challenges: Hardcore big data testing involves
smarter data sampling, skills, and techniques that can perform various testing
scenarios with high efficiency. Big data applications are built in such a way
that it can be changed and used in wide range of capabilities. Any errors in
the elements which produce big data applications can lead to difficult
situations.
Testing of Big Data Applications
Testing of big data applications can be further described in the following steps:

1. Data Staging Validation: The first stage also referred to as a Pre-Hadoop stage

which involves the process of big data testing.
 Data should be first verified from the different sources such as RDBMS,
social media posts, blogs. It will ensure that only correct data is extracted into
the Hadoop system.
 The data which is received in the Hadoop system should be compared with
data of different sources to ensure the similar data is received.
 Also, you need to verify that only correct data which is received should be
supplied to HDFS location in Hadoop.
2. Map Reduce Validation: the Second stage comprises the verification and
validation of Map Reduce. Usually, testers perform tests on business logic on every
single node and run them on every different node for validation. These tests are run to
ensure:
 Valuable key pair’s creation is present.
 Validation of data is done after the completion of the second
 The process of map reducing is working properly.
 Data aggregation or data segregation are implemented effectively on the
data.
3. Output Validation Phase: This is the third and final stage of big data testing. After
successful completion of stage two, the output data files are produced which is then
ready to be moved to the location as per the requirement of the business. Initially, this
stage includes processes such as:
 Checking and verifying the transformation rules are applied accurately or
not.
 It verifies and checks whether the data loaded into the enterprise’s system
is loaded successfully or not. Also, it verifies the integrity of the data during
the loading procedure is maintained.
 The last process would be verifying and checking the data which is loaded
in the enterprise’s system is similar to the data present in the HDFS file
system in Hadoop. Also, it ensures that there is no corrupt data in the system.
Challenges in Big Data Testing
 Following are the challenges faced in big data testing:
 Automation Testing is Essential: Since the big data involves large data
sets that need high processing power that takes more time than regular testing,
testing it manually is no longer an option. Thus, it requires automated test
scripts to detect any flaws in the process. It can only be written by
programmers that mean middle-level testers or black box tester needs to scale
up their skills to do big data testing.
 Higher Technical Expertise: Dealing with big data doesn’t include only
testers but it involves various technical expertise such as developers and
project managers. The team involved in this system should be proficient in
using big data framework such as Hadoop.
 Complexity and Integration Problems: As big data is collected from
various sources it is not always compatible, coordinated or may not have
similar formats as enterprise applications. For a proper functioning system,
information should be available in the expected time and the input/output
data flow should also be free to run.
 Cost Challenges: For a consistent development, integration and testing of
big data require For business’s many big data specialist may cost more.
Many businesses use a pay-as-you-use solution in order to come up with
cost-saving solution. Also, don’t forget to inquire about the testing
procedure, most of the process should include automation tests otherwise it
will be taking weeks of manual testing.

In coming days, Big Data testing becomes imperative as well as inevitable across
all the industries.