Using Caché Objects - InterSystems Documentation

19
The Caché Data Population Utility
Caché includes a utility for creating random test data for persistent classes. The creation of
such data is known as data population; the utility for doing this, known as the Caché populate
utility, is useful for testing persistent classes before deploying them within a real application.
It is especially helpful when testing how various parts of an application will function when
they are working against a large set of data.
The populate utility takes its name from its principal element — the %Populate class, which
is part of the Caché class library. Classes that inherit from %Populate contain a method called
Populate, which allows you to generate and save class instances containing random data
values. You can also customize the behavior of the %Populate class to provide data for your
application's needs.
Along with the %Populate class, the populate utility uses %PopulateUtils. %Populate provides
the interface to the utility, while %PopulateUtils is a helper class.
19.1 Data Population Basics
It is quite simple to populate a class with test data:
1. Include the populate utility functionality as part of the class definition by making
%Populate one of its superclasses.
2. Compile the class.
3. Invoke the populate utility, which creates test data.
Using Caché Objects 161