# Infosys Whitepaper 
Title: Data Archival Testing 
Author: Infosys Limited 
Format: PDF 1.7 

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 WHITE PAPER DATA ARCHIVAL TESTING Abstract Today, there is an exponential rise in the amount of data being  generated by organizations. This explosion of data increases IT  infrastructure needs and has an immense impact on some important  business decisions that are dependent on proficient data analytics.  These challenges have made data archival extremely important from  a data management perspective. Data archival testing is becoming  increasingly important for businesses as it helps address these  challenges, validate the accuracy and quality of archived data and  improve the performance of related applications.  The paper is aimed at helping readers better understand the space  of data archival testing, its implementation and the associated  benefits.<|endoftext|>

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 Introduction One of the most important aspects of managing a business today is managing its data growth. On a daily basis, the  cost of data management outpaces the data storage costs for most organizations. Operational analytics and business  intelligence reporting usually require active operational data.  Data that does not have any current requirement or usage,  known as inactive data, can be archived to a safe and secure storage. Data archiving becomes important for companies  who want to manage their data growth, without compromising on the quality of data that resides in their production  systems.<|endoftext|>Many CIOs and CTOs are reworking on their data retention policies and their data archival and data retrieval strategies  because of an increased demand for data storage, reduced application performance and the need to be compliant with  the ever changing legislations and regulations.1 Data Archival Testing – Test Planning  Data Archival is the process of moving  data that is not required for operational,  analytical or reporting purposes to offline  storage. A data retrieval mechanism is  developed to restore data from the offline  storage.<|endoftext|>The common challenges faced during  data archival are:  • Inaccurate or irrelevant data in data  archives • Difficulty in the data retrieval  process from the data archives Data archival testing helps address these  challenges. While devising the data  archival test plan, the following factors  need to be taken into consideration: Data Dependencies There are many intricate data  dependencies in an enterprise’s  architecture. The data which is archived  should include the complete business  objects along with metadata, that  helps retain the referential integrity  of data across related tables and  applications. Data archival testing  needs to validate that all related  data is archived together for easy  interpretation, during storage and  retrieval.  Data Encoding The encoding of data in the archival  database depends on the underlying  hardware for certain types of data. To  illustrate, data archival testing needs to  ensure that the encoding of numerical  fields such as integers also archives  the related hardware information, for  easier future data retrieval and display  of data with a different set of hardware.<|endoftext|>Data Retrieval Data needs to be retrieved from  archives for regulatory, legal and  business needs. The validation of the  data retrieval process ensures that  the archived data is easily accessed,  retrieved and displayed in a format  which can be clearly interpreted  without any time consuming manual  intervention.<|endoftext|>Data Archival Testing – Implementation  The data archival testing process includes  validating processes which encompass  data archival, data deletion and data  retrieval.  Figure 1 below describes the different  stages of a data archival testing process,  the business drivers, the different types of  data that can be archived and the various  offline storage modes.  Figure 1: The Data Archival Testing Process External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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 Test the Data Archival  process  1 • Testing the Data Archival process  ensures that business entities that  are archived includes master data,  transaction data, meta data and  reference data • Validates the storage mechanism  and that the archived data is stored  in the correct format. The data  also has to be tested for hardware  independence Test the Data Deletion  process 2 • Inactive data needs to be archived  and moved to a secure storage for  retrieval at a later point and then  deleted from all active applications  using it. This validation process  would verify that that the test data  deletion process has not caused any  error to any existing applications  and dashboards • When archived data is deleted from  systems, verify that the applications  and reports are conforming to their  performance requirements Test the Data Retrieval  process 3 • Data that has been archived needs  to be easily identified and accessible  in case of any legal or business  needs • For scenarios that involve urgent  data retrievals, processes for the  same need to be validated within a  defined time period Benefits of Data Archival Testing The benefits of data archival testing are often interrelated and have a significant impact on the IT infrastructure costs for a business. Some of  the benefits are: Accomplishing all these benefits determine the success of a data archival test strategy.<|endoftext|>Reduced storage costs Improved application  performance Minimize business   outages Data Compliance Only the data that is relevant gets archived and for a defined time period which reduces  hardware costs and its maintenance costs significantly.<|endoftext|>Data is retrieved faster; the network performs better as only relevant data is present in  the production environment. All these factors enhance application performance.<|endoftext|>Archived data that is deleted from production systems does not have an impact on  the related applications’ performance and functionality, leading to smooth business  operations.<|endoftext|>Easy retrieval and availability of archived data ensures higher data compliance with the  legal and regulatory requirements.<|endoftext|>Conclusion Due to the critical business needs for data retention, regulatory and compliance requirements and a cost effective way to access  archived data, many businesses have started realizing and adopting data archival testing. Therefore an organization’s comprehensive  test strategy needs to include a data archival test strategy which facilitates smooth business operations, ensures fulfillment of all data  requirements, maintains data quality and reduces infrastructure costs.<|endoftext|>External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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 About the 
Author Naju D. Mohan  Naju is a Group Project Manager with Infosys with about 15 years of IT experience. She is currently managing specialized testing services like  SOA testing, Data Warehouse testing and Test Data Management for many leading clients in the retail sector.<|endoftext|>REFERENCES  1. ‘Data overload puts UK retail sector under pressure’, Continuity Central, February 2009  2. ‘ Data Archiving, Purging and Retrieval Methods for Enterprises’, Database Journal, January 2011 © 2018 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys  acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this  documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the  prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document.  For more information, contact askus@infosys.com Infosys.com | NYSE: INFY Stay Connected   


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