Unit 4: Testing and Automation

FMR provides a comprehensive user interface for creating, maintaining, testing, and executing data recoding tasks. In a production environment it is preferable to automate these tasks to the extent possible and embed them in production workflows.

Why testing matters

Regardless of the technology and approach used, recoding of data can be very powerful. In parallel, recoding of data using complex methods and regular expressions can also be complicated, requiring thorough testing to ensure that all the possible scenarios have been accounted for and the results are as expected.

Testing and automation with FMR

The FMR user interface has a feature to support the testing of mappings whereby the user selects the structure map to be tested and an input dataset to use for the test and then FMR produces a detailed report on the results of the transformation.

Select the FMR user interface to enlarge.

Select the FMR mapping output to enlarge.

Testing and automation with web services: Example use cases

Web services may also be used to automate recoding (transformation) and can be directed to provide details on the results of the transformation request to assist with validation and testing.

Select each example use case for the details.

Example 1: POSTMAN & XML

The same validation test previously shown using the FMR user interface can also be undertaken using the FMR data transformation web service and the POSTMAN application, in this case using an XML data format.

Select the example to enlarge.

Select the RESULTS from POSTMAN POST request to the transformation web service to enlarge.

Example 2: CURL & XML

The same POSTMAN FMR transformation web service call in Example 1 can also be executed using CURL (or another similar tool).

Select the example to enlarge.

Example 3: POSTMAN & CSV

Note that the DATA for the previous request in Example 2 was in SDMX-ML format although this could just as easily have been demonstrated using any other SDMX format, such as CSV.

Select the example to enlarge.

Example 4: CURL & CSV

The same POSTMAN FMR transformation web service call in Example 3 with data in CSV format using CURL (or another similar tool).

Select the example to enlarge.

What do you know?

You have now completed Recoding: Transforming Data into Different Structures, but before moving on to the module summary, try this final question.

Which of the following statements are TRUE?

Select all that apply and then select Submit.