BI Testing: Business Intelligence Test Cases

What is BI Testing?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of gathering, cleansing, analyzing, integrating and sharing data to derive actional insights that drive business growth. Business Intelligence Testing or BI testing verifies the staging data, ETL process, BI reports and ensures the implementation is correct. BI Testing ensures data credibility and accuracy of insights derives from the BI process.

You can learn more about ETL/ Business Intelligence in this tutorial

BI Testing Test Cases & Scenarios

Following are generic test cases that need to be validated for any BI Testing Project

ETL verification Test Scenarios

Sample Test Cases

Verify data is mapped correctly from source to target system
Verify all tables and their fields are copied from source to target
Verify keys configured to be auto-generated are created properly in target system
Verify that null fields are not populated
Verify data is neither garbled nor truncated
Verify data type and format in target system is as expected
Verify there is no duplicity of data in the target system
Verify transformations are applied correctly
Verify that the precision of data in numeric fields is accurate
Verify exception handling is robust

Staging Data Test Scenarios

Sample Test Cases

Reconciliation check- record count between the STG (staging) tables and target tables are same after applying filter rules
Insert a record which is not loaded into target table for given key combination
Copy records, sending same records that are already loaded into target tables-should not be loaded
Update a record for a key when value columns changed on day_02 loads
Delete the records logically in the target tables
Values loaded by process tables
Values loaded by reference tables

Data Loading in BI Test Scenarios

Sample Test Cases

Check if the target and source data base are connected well and there are no access issues.
For a full load, check the truncate option and ensure its working fine.
While loading the data, check for the performance of the session
Check for non-fatal errors.
Verify you can fail the calling parent task if the child task fails.
Verify that the logs are updated
Verify mapping and workflow parameters are configured accurately
Verify the number of tables in source and target systems is the same
Compare the attributes from stage tables to that of the target tables. They should be matched.

BI Reports Test Scenarios

Sample Test Cases

Display date and time
Decimal precision for key figures
In a given page display the number of rows and columns
Free characteristics in the report
How are blank values/data displayed for both characteristics and key figures in the report
Whether search for characteristics is based on key or key&text as applicable
Does search option on text is case sensitive- Upper, Lower or both