Business Intelligence (BI) Testing: Sample Test Cases

Thomas HamiltonByThomas Hamilton Hours Updated

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

Sample Test Cases for BI

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

Test Scenarios Test Cases
ETL verification
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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