Masking function HASHLOV always returns a NULL value when using our Custom Seedlist

Products

• CA Test Data Manager (Data Finder / Grid Tools)

Issue/Introduction

While using a custom seedlist and using HASHLOV on a column different from the column being applied, the value always results in null no matter what the input is.

 

Cause

Reviewing the TDM documentation and analyzing the results from your imported custom seedlist, we noticed is the first names are all showing as NULL. This is because the CSV file structure is off, and FDM is picking up the "name-value" pair as firstname,NULL. Causing the masking to always return the value NULL.

Please refer to https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/devops/test-data-management/4-10/provisioning-test-data/generate-synthetic-test-data/generate-synthetic-data-using-datamaker/propagate-seed-list-data-across-masking-engines.html

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Considerations

Review the following considerations:

• Ensure that the seed data is present in a CSV (comma-separated value) file. Each row in the CSV file represents a record in the database. The first value in the row represents the category name and the remaining items in the row represent the name-value pairs. For example, consider a row in the CSV file:
   
  Address-US,City,Plano,State,Texas
   
  In this example, 
  Address-US represents the category name and City,Plano and State,Texas represent the name-value pairs.
  
  
• Remove the column headers from the CSV file.
  
  
• If the CSV file contains non-ASCII characters, use UTF-8 encoding.
  
  
• The minimum number of name-value pairs is one and the maximum is 30.
  
  
• The SQL scripts that are used in this article are generic and are written considering the maximum allowed values. If you have fewer values in a row of a CSV file, change the SQL scripts accordingly.
  
  
• If you need to insert data only in the Scramble database where names are not required for the values, you can simplify the CSV file by providing only the category names and values. Also, you must modify the SQL query that is used for loading the CSV file into the table as appropriate.
  
  
• Some databases (for example, MS SQL and Teradata) expect that the number of values in each row of a CSV file must match the number of columns present in the database table. Therefore, if you have a CSV file where the number of values is not the same for each row or the number of values is fewer than the number of table columns, you can use the provided PowerShell script. This script helps you transform the CSV file into the format that the SQL scripts included in this article require. For more information about how to run this script see, the Run the Transform Script section

Looking at the first record in your CSV (Line 2) we see:

CUSTOM_PERSON_NAMES,Dante,NULL,Brown,Smith,"Smith, Dante Brown",Dante B Smith,Dante B. Smith,Dante Brown Smith,Dante Smith,[email protected],71186

Where CUSTOM_PERSON_NAMES is the Category Name and all remaining comma-separated fields are considered name-value pairs. Resulting in the following

Name	Value
Dante	NULL
Brown	Smith
"Smith	Dante Brown"
Dante B Smith	Dante B. Smith
Dante Brown Smith	Dante Smith
[email protected]	71186

 

Environment

Release : 4.10

Component : Fast Data Masker

Resolution

You need to strip the header row from the CSV, restructure the file into Name/Value pairs, and reimport the corrected seedlist into the scramble database. Then rerun the masking job.

Additional Information

For the exact steps, please refer to "Propagate Seed List Data Across Masking Engines"
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/devops/test-data-management/4-10/provisioning-test-data/generate-synthetic-test-data/generate-synthetic-data-using-datamaker/propagate-seed-list-data-across-masking-engines.html