IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management (TDM) Reviews

The solution is used mainly for data masking.

The solution can be used on both legacy and non-legacy systems.

We use the product to track across the entire product life cycle.

It is a good tool that benefits our organization in terms of ease of maintenance and project management. We can check and showcase various reports to the management team.

Provide production-like data to lower environments, allowing us to eliminate risks of data exposure.

While allowing us to eliminate all sensitive data in lower environments, it also allows us to integrate in-house developed libraries.

We use these functions:

• Archive – archive data to PST files, we do not archive data to the archive DBMS
• Data privacy – masking of PII and PHI data
• Submitter – test data management

This product archives all types of relational databases. It is the original archive solution for business.

Archive

Moving data that is no longer needed in daily processing on to archive files, resulting in:

• Faster query performance.
• Shorter batch execution trails.
• Stops/slows the growth of disk spaces. We don’t have to constantly add additional disk space to the DBMS. After data is archived, we do not shrink the DB, on non-processing days. We also do not allow the tool to delete the data that was archived. Instead, we work with the Application DBAs to move the data onto Oracle Partitions; instead of deleting data and watching the commits process on the transaction logs. A misstep can throw the database into recovery mode. Instead, we just drop the partition holding the data that was archived.

Data Privacy

• All PII/PHI data in non-production environments is masked.
• Used during end-to-end testing. By using the same rules for all data, we ensure data integrity across all of our applications.
• Ensures customer data is not exposed in non-production environments.

Subsetter (Test Data Management)

• In the past, PeopleSoft admin would build non-production environments using chunks of transaction data, including all the static/reference data, resulting in broken chained data and a lot of useless data.
• Selecting logical slices of data, we can ensure 100% data integrity and smaller-size databases. Also, we can pick and choose specific types of data to test and then combine that with data privacy. We have an efficient test bed of data that is optimized for performance, testing criteria, and is PII/PHI compliant.

I value data masking, data extraction/sub-setting, data comparison, and data load.

• Creates an automated process for production data extraction
• Does scrubbing
• Does sub-setting and movement of data
• Tests regions across various platforms including legacy and distributed platforms

I really appreciate using the match keys and comparing the records before and after masking. This is done by joining multiple tables to form a single record. This helps to get a faster validation of data.

The product has helped to streamline the Test Data Management (TDM) process. Without this product, participation from several stakeholders such as DBAs, Admins, and the Environment refresh team were required.

I use IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management (TDM) for data management. We usually do the data validation from the source to the target and apply the transformation logic. 

I like the features compared to other tools. This tool is more flexible to use than other tools like an Oracle product or SAP product. I think IBM tools are more flexible, and this tool is also a good product.

The Data Archive or Data Growth feature is one of the very useful solutions that help organizations to manage and support their database archiving strategies. This feature also enables business policies, data retention and access control.

This feature helps organization to plan test data strategies based on data retention policies.