IRI, The CoSort Company

• application stress and range-testing
• outsourced program development
• simulated database population
• hardware and software benchmarking
• sharing custom file and report formats

You can now recommend and use a tool that easily generates safe test data in custom file formats for all of the above uses. Either the RowGen (test data generation) package or the CoSort product's SortCL utility can generate (and transform) safe test field data in real report and production file formats that you can send outside the firewall. Alternatively, IRI's new FieldShield tool can be used to protect production data at risk by applying selective security functions (like encryption, de-identification, or masking) to specific fields.

Any number, size, type, and position of fields, records, or files can be specified in a single job script and I/O pass. Various selection and ranging criteria can be applied to synthesize and stress applications. Using SortCL, you can mix and match random with real data, and with other field-level data protection techniques at the same time.

If you use SortCL already to define production file layouts, you can also use the same metadata to create safe test data in the same formats (in CoSort or in RowGen). If you use the less expensive RowGen tool now, the same metadata you use to define test data can be migrated for use in SortCL to transform real data in the same format(s) when it becomes available.

All IRI tools employ a common metadata format and work from a simple-to-use scripting language or GUI to generate safe, intelligent test data or protect real data, which you can in turn use to populate database tables and applications. A variety of logging and audit functions are also available to help you validate compliance with privacy laws before or after data are outsourced.