What's New

New Command Line Utility

Automate your test data generation process with the new command line utility. You can create a data generation plan with the GUI version. Execute that plan with the command line utility.

Better Generation Of Master/Detail Data

We added a Repeat Value setting that is very useful for generation master/detail data. The Repeat Value setting ensures that a generated value gets used a number of times before generating a new value. For example, you can specify that for each CUSTOMER, at least 2 with a max of 5 ORDERS must be generated.

Preview Of Data To Be Generated

You can preview the data that will be generated for each table in the new Preview pane. When you change a data generation setting, the data will change automatically.

New Setting: Select Mode

For each list based generator (e.g. Value from list, Value from table,...) you can now specify to select a random item from the list (Random) or to step through the list (Sequential).

New List Based Generators

We extended the number of list based generators. Now you can define your own query to select from and selecting from views is supported now also.

Formulas

You can now define formulas for numeric fields. You can for example define a formula for field3 that is the sum of field1 and field2 (field3=field1+field2).

Inserts Per Transaction

A new project setting allows you to define the number of records/inserts per transaction. Changing this number may speed up the inserts for large sets of test data.

Improved Expression Data Generator

One of the most powerful data generator is the "random data using expression" generator. You can generate strings that match a defined pattern. From now on the expression generator also supports the generation of incremental values (e.g. [CUST]I(1,1,5) will generate "CUST00001", "CUST00002" etc.). We also added support for "sub expressions". These are expressions in expressions (e.g. [exp1|exp2]).

Expressions can now also be used in external files and lists of values. You can for example use a data generator "Value from file" that randomly selects a value from a CSV file. This value may be an expression then. Datanamic Data Generator recognizes that an expression is used and generates a string that match the defined pattern.

Reusable Named Generators

Version 2011 introduces a new type of (reusable) generators, named generators. A named generator is a set of data generation settings. For each field you can select a compatible generic fill type or a compatible named generator. Use pre-installed named generators or create your own named generators. You can use named generators in multiple projects.

For each named generator you set up a data generator (e.g. Value from list) and you define field matches strings used to automatically allocate the generator to fields (e.g. a named generator "Postal Code" must be associated with "zipcode" fields etc).

More than 50 named generators will be installed when you install Datanamic Data Generator. You can create your own named generators and/or modify the pre-installed named generators if desired.