CA Test Data Management Release Announcement

Release 4.6

Release 4.6 delivers a number of powerful new features, including integrated Data Masking workflow, which helps users to discover, tag and mask PII sensitive information in a single workflow in TDM portal. This new version can be downloaded directly from the CA Support Site.  Once logged in you will be able to select the latest version from Download Management. Look for CA Test Data Manager in the search box to speed up your discovery.

Integrated Data Masking

Format preserving masking of all PII data in a variety of data sources from TDM portal

·         Default masking rules for all tags detected by out of the box classifiers

·         Ability to adjust masking rules at the tag & column level

·         Ability to download FDM compatible configuration file based on portal defined masking rules

TDM Data Model

Enhancements in automated data model discovery

·         Ability to register TDM Data Model tables for use in Synthetic Data Generation

·         Ability to define an alias for a table / column in the data model

·         Ability to scan key relationships only

·         Automatic exclusion of ‘Who’ Columns from relationship discovery

PII Data Discovery Enhancements

Usability enhancements to PII data discovery

·         Integrated into Data Model

·         Support for picklist when adding PII Tags

·         and more ..

Enhanced Find and Reserve

Productivity enhancements

·         DB2 for z/OS support

·         Pre-fetch scheduling

·         Adoption of the new data model discovery

Telemetry

Collection of various customer and product usage metrics

·         Number of concurrent users

·         Product version

·         and more...

In TDM Release 4.6, we have introduced an end-to-end workflow to identify, tag and mask sensitive data stored in various tables across disparate but connected data sources.  The PII Data Discovery process automatically scans through table data and assigns default masking rules for all tags (i.e. sensitive data classifier tag) detected by the out of the box classifiers. A TDE can simply accept the defaults or customize these masking functions to another more appropriate one where ever it is necessary. The TDE can also leverage conditional masking and database seed lists all from the TDM portal. Once the masking functions are confirmed the TDE can execute the masking job directly from TDM portal without changing context or moving to another application. If the TDE is not sure about the changes, the masking job can now be executed in preview mode to make sure the masking configuration provides the expected result. For any reasons if the TDE wants to execute the masking job at a later time directly on the masking server an FDM (Fast Data Masker) compatible configuration file can also be downloaded.

This integrated workflow is one of the most anticipated workflows and allows a Test Data Engineer (TDE) who may only have a limited understanding of their application data model to identify sensitive data, tag and mask them in a single workflow.

If you would like to learn more about the Data Model Discovery and the other great features in TDM 4.6, please watch this video.

TDM Data Model

The automated data model discovery process which was originally released as part of the previous 4.5 release now includes several usability improvements.  First and foremost, the discovered data model is now the foundation for synthetic data generation which means all Test Data Management features now work off a single source truth.

User friendly aliases to application tables and columns, a new addition in 4.6, improves tester efficiency significantly. The model relationship discovery process now excludes the standard ‘who’ columns thereby reducing the scope and improving the performance of the data model discovery process.

PII Data Discovery Improvements

PII data discovery, a very popular feature among our customer base, has been further enhanced based on feedback from our design partners. Now users can not only add a new tag to a column from a picklist but also double click on a heatmap tile to investigate a table. We have also added the ability to filter by row count in the heatmap, thus allowing our customers to remove empty tables from further investigation.

The two most significant improvements to Find & Reserve are the support for DB2 for z/OS and the simplified 2-Step wizard in the UI. This now allows testers to find and reserve data across mainframes and other distributed relational databases. Like Synthetic Data Generation, Find and Reserve has been enhanced to support the new data model but remains backward compatible with for the models created in the legacy mode. We have also added support for additional data types. Fixed-length character types (char, nchar) and binary (binary, varbinary etc.) are now supported in Find & Reserve.

Telemetry helps CA to understand how our products are used on a daily basis and helps us create a product to better suit our customer’s needs. We have been working on Telemetry for the last few releases and in 4.6, we have added support for several product usage and support metrics like memory, CPU usage etc. An option Is provided to opt out of sending telemetry information to CA but it is still possible to review local usage data in the TDM portal.