ETL Testing Int - 1
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ETL Testing Interview Questions
ETL Testing Interview Questions
Last Updated: Jan 03, 2024
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ETL Interview Questions for Freshers
1. What is the importance of ETL testing?
2. Explain the process of ETL testing.
3. Name some tools that are used in ETL.
4. What are different types of ETL testing?
5. What are the roles and responsibilities of an ETL tester?
6. What are the different challenges of ETL testing?
7. Explain the three-layer architecture of an ETL cycle.
8. Explain data mart.
9. Explain how a data warehouse differs from data mining.
10. What do you mean by data purging?
11. State difference between ETL and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) tools.
12. Write about the difference between power mart and power center.
13. What is data source view?
14. Write the difference between ETL testing and database testing.
15. What is BI (Business Intelligence)?
16. What do you mean by ETL Pipeline?
17. Explain the data cleaning process.
ETL Interview Questions for Experienced
ETL Scenario Based Interview Questions
ETL MCQ Questions
What is ETL Testing?
Almost every business relies heavily on data nowadays, which is good! With
subjective and accurate data, we can grasp more than we can comprehend with our
human brains. What matters is when. Data processing, like any system, is prone to
errors. What is the value of data when there is a possibility that some of it could
be lost, incomplete, or irrelevant?
This is where ETL testing comes into play. In business processes today, ETL is
considered an important component of data warehousing architecture. Data is
extracted from source systems, transformed into a consistent data type, and loaded
into a single repository through ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load). Validating,
evaluating, and qualifying data is an important part of ETL testing. We conduct ETL
testing after extracting, transforming, and loading the data to verify that the
final data was appropriately loaded into the system in the correct format. It
ensures that data reaches its destination safely and is of high quality before it
enters your BI (Business Intelligence) reports.
Ensure data is transformed efficiently and quickly from one system to another.
Data quality issues during ETL processes, such as duplicate data or data loss, can
also be identified and prevented by ETL testing.
Assures that the ETL process itself is running smoothly and is not hampered.
Ensures that all data implemented is in line with client requirements and provides
accurate output.
Ensures that bulk data is moved to the new destination completely and securely.
Informatica PowerCenter
IBM InfoSphere DataStage
Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
SAP Data Services
SAS Data Manager, etc.
Open Source ETL
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In contrast to data warehouses, each data mart has a unique set of end users, and
building a data mart takes less time and costs less, so it is more suitable for
small businesses. There is no duplicate (or unused) data in a data mart, and the
data is updated on a regular basis.
11. State difference between ETL and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) tools.
ETL tools: The data is extracted, transformed, and loaded into the data warehouse
or data mart using ETL tools. Several transformations are necessary before data is
loaded into the target table in order to implement business logic. Example: Data
stage, Informatica, etc.
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) tools: OLAP tools are designed to create
reports from data warehouses and data marts for business analysis. It loads data
from the target tables into the OLAP repository and performs the required
modifications to create a report. Example: Business Objects, Cognos etc.
12. Write about the difference between power mart and power center.
Power Mart Power Center
It only processes small amounts of data and is considered good if the processing
requirements are low. It is considered good when the amount of data to be
processed is high, as it processes bulk data in a short period of time.
ERP sources are not supported. ERP sources such as SAP, PeopleSoft, etc. are
supported.
Currently, it only supports local repositories. Local and global repositories
are supported.
There are no specifications for turning a local repository into a global
repository. It is capable of converting local repositories into global ones.
You must run the Data Source View Wizard from Solution Explorer within SQL Server
Data Tools to create the DSV.
In solution explorer, Right Click Data source view folder -> Click New Data Source
View.
Choose one of the available data source objects, or add a new one.
Click Advanced on the same page to specifically select schemas, apply a filter, or
exclude information about table relationships.
Filter Available Objects (If we use a string as a selection criterion, it is
possible to prune the list of the available objects).
A Name Matching page appears if there are no table relationships defined for the
relational data source, and you can choose the appropriate method for matching
names by clicking on it.
14. Write the difference between ETL testing and database testing.
Data validation is involved in both ETL testing and database testing, however, the
two are different. The ETL testing procedure normally involves analyzing data
stored in a warehouse system. On the other hand, the database testing procedure is
commonly used to analyze data stored in transactional systems. The following are
the distinct differences between ETL testing and Database testing.
They reduce errors, bottlenecks, and latency, ensuring the smooth flow of
information between systems.
With ETL pipelines, businesses are able to achieve competitive advantage.
The ETL pipeline can centralize and standardize data, allowing analysts and
decision-makers to easily access and use it.
It facilitates data migrations from legacy systems to new repositories.
17. Explain the data cleaning process.
There is always the possibility of duplicate or mislabeled data when combining
multiple data sources. Incorrect data leads to unreliable outcomes and algorithms,
even when they appear to be correct. Therefore, consolidation of multiple data
representations as well as elimination of duplicate data become essential in order
to ensure accurate and consistent data. Here comes the importance of the data
cleaning process.
Data cleaning can also be referred to as data scrubbing or data cleansing. This
refers to the process of removing incomplete, duplicate, corrupt, or incorrect data
from a dataset. As the need to integrate multiple data sources becomes more
apparent, for example in data warehouses or federated database systems, the
significance of data cleaning increases greatly. Because the specific steps in a
data cleaning process will vary depending on the dataset, developing a template for
your process will ensure that you do it correctly and consistently.
User Interface Bug: GUI bugs include issues with color selection, font style,
navigation, spelling check, etc.
Input/Output Bug: This type of bug causes the application to take invalid values in
place of valid ones.
Boundary Value Analysis Bug: Bugs in this section check for both the minimum and
maximum values.
Calculation bugs: These bugs are usually mathematical errors causing incorrect
results.
Load Condition Bugs: A bug like this does not allow multiple users. The user-
accepted data is not allowed.
Race Condition Bugs: This type of bug interferes with your system’s ability to
function properly and causes it to crash or hang.
ECP (Equivalence Class Partitioning) Bug: A bug of this type results in invalid
types.
Version Control Bugs: Regression Testing is where these kinds of bugs normally
occur and does not provide version details.
Hardware Bugs: This type of bug prevents the device from responding to an
application as expected.
Help Source Bugs: The help documentation will be incorrect due to this bug.
3. Can you define cubes and OLAP cubes?
The cube is one of the things on which data processing relies heavily. In their
simplest form, cubes are just data processing units that contain dimensions and
fact tables from the Data warehouse. It provides clients with a multidimensional
view of data, querying, and analysis capabilities.
On the other hand, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is software that allows you
to analyze data from several databases at the same time. For reporting purposes, an
OLAP cube can be used to store data in the multidimensional form. With the cubes,
creating and viewing reports becomes easier, as well as smoothing and improving the
reporting process. The end users are responsible for managing and maintaining these
cubes, who have to manually update their data.
Types of Facts
Additive: Facts that are fully additive are the most flexible and useful. We can
sum up additive facts across any dimension associated with the fact table.
Semi-additive: We can sum up semi-additive facts across some dimensions associated
with the fact table, but not all.
Non-Additive: The Fact table contains non-additive facts, which cannot be summed up
for any dimension. The ratio is an example of a non-additive fact.
5. Define Grain of Fact.
Accordingly, grain fact refers to the level of storing fact information.
Alternatively, it is known as Fact Granularity.
7. What do you mean by staging area and write its main purpose?
During the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process, a staging area or landing
zone is used as an intermediate storage area. It serves as a temporary storage area
between data sources and data warehouses. Staging areas are primarily used to
extract data quickly from their respective data sources, therefore minimizing the
impact of those sources. Using the staging area, data is combined from multiple
data sources, transformed, validated, and cleaned after data has been loaded.
Advantages
Snowflake reduces the space consumed by dimension tables, but the space saved is
usually insignificant compared with the entire data warehouse.
Due to the number of tables added, you may need complex joins to perform a query,
which will reduce query performance.
9. Explain what you mean by Bus Schema.
An important part of ETL is dimension identification, and this is largely done by
the Bus Schema. A BUS schema is actually comprised of a suite of verified
dimensions and uniform definitions and can be used for handling dimension
identification across all businesses. To put it another way, the bus schema
identifies the common dimensions and facts across all the data marts of an
organization just like identifying conforming dimensions (dimensions with the same
information/meaning when being referred to different fact tables). Using the Bus
schema, information is given in a standard format with precise dimensions in ETL.
Round-robin Partitioning: This is a method in which data is evenly spread among all
partitions. Therefore, each partition has approximately the same number of rows.
Unlike hash partitioning, the partitioning columns do not need to be specified. New
rows are assigned to partitions in round-robin style.
Hash Partitioning: With hash partitioning, rows are evenly distributed across
partitions based on a partition key. Using a hash function, the server creates
partition keys to group data.
2. Write different ways of updating a table when SSIS (SQL Server Integration
Services) is being used.
In order to update a table in SSIS, the following steps can be taken:
Mapping Doc Validation: Determines whether the Mapping Doc contains ETL
information.
Data Quality: In this case, every aspect of the data is tested, including number
Check, Null Check, Precision Check, etc.
Correctness Issues: Tests for missing, incorrect, non-unique, and null data.
Constraint Validation: Make sure that the constraints are properly defined for each
table.
4. Explain ETL mapping sheets.
Typically, ETL mapping sheets include full information about a source and a
destination table, including every column as well as their lookup in reference
tables. As part of the ETL testing process, ETL testers may need to write big
queries with multiple joins to validate data at any point in the testing process.
Data verification queries are significantly easier to write using ETL mapping
sheets.
7. What are the conditions under which you use dynamic cache and static cache in
connected and unconnected transformations?
In order to update the master table and slowly changing dimensions (SCD) type 1, it
is necessary to use the dynamic cache.
In the case of flat files, a static cache is used.
Conclusion
With abundant job opportunities and lucrative salary options, ETL testing has
become a popular trend. ETL Testing has an extensive market share and is one of the
cornerstones of data warehousing and business analytics. To make this process more
organized and simpler, many software vendors have introduced ETL testing tools.
Most employers who seek ETL testers look for candidates with specific technical
skills and experience that meet their needs. No worries, this platform is a great
resource for both beginners and professionals. In this article, we have covered 35+
ETL testing interview questions ranging from freshers to experienced level
questions typically asked during interviews. Preparation is key before you go for
your job interview.
Recommended Resources:
SQL
Python
Java
Informatica
Bus Schema
Data Staging
Schema Objects
Workflow
2.
Extract is a process that includes ___ .
Microsoft Dynamic AX
Source Bugs
Calculation Bugs
Building dimensions
Summarizing data
6.
_____ are data processing units comprised of fact tables and dimensions from the
data warehouse.
OLAP
Cubes
OLTP
One
Two
Three
Four
8.
Which of the following is the process by which raw data is migrated into a data
warehouse?
OLTP
OLAP
ODS
One-to-many
One-to-one
Simple to use
It is almost free.
12.
Considering these factors, which one is not essential when choosing ETL tools?
Maintainability
Performance
Task Capability
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