Test automation capabilities of OATS

Oracle Application Testing Suite (a.k.a OATS) has a wide variety of capabilities in the area of test automation, let us understand in more detail in the following perspectives:

• Types of testing in software development life cycle.
• Kinds of automated testing.
• Types of applications it  can test.

 Types of testing in software development life cycle

Regression testing:

In the current world of fast paced software upgrades , enhancements and bug fixes, it is very critical to test the application’s functionality which used to work earlier, which is called as regression testing. As the releases are very regular one has to test the same features multiple times and creates fatigue for the people who test manually, also there are high chances of manual errors. In order to improve the process and reduce the time span and increase the accuracy these tests are automated, to get more understanding you can read necessity of automation testing in software testing. OATS test scripts can be utilized to perform regression testing any number of times across each build or release based on the scoping or test strategy.

System testing:

System testing is about testing the entire software system as a whole against the published system or user requirements. The test cases can be automated through OATS, the automation coverage is directly proportional to number of scripts automated and the benefits are more as and when the automation coverage is increased, as the test scripts can be run by machines which are less error prone and can be made to run multiple times.

Integration testing:

Integration testing about validating the integration of individual units together, that is for example when we bug a product in an online store there are multiple functional units which are integrated together come in to picture like financial transactions, inventory management. OATS test scripts can be created to validate these integration test cases and could be used for performing the integration testing.

User acceptance testing:

User acceptance testing primarily done by the end users or clients  before they can uptake the latest upgrades, bug fixes and enhancements. The clients or end users can create automated Functional automation, which is about validating the functionality across the application, OATS test scripts can validate the functionality.

Kinds of automated Testing

Automated functional testing:

Functional testing is about testing the functionality of the software application against the functional design documents or the functionality specifications, It is a type of black box testing where the internals of the coding structure is not considered. There are different types of testing involved at different steps of software development life cycle. OATS can be used to automate functionality of all the applications which fall under the categories specified under section “Types of applications it can automate”.

Automated load testing:

Load testing works on the factors like how the application behaves when certain amount of load and stress is put on the application, for example: if 1000’s of users are accessing the application at once, what would be the application’s response time? would it crash or would it work with few errors or would it functionally work well across the application? There are many more factors to be calculated or to be worked up on. OATS has the capability of creating load testing related test scripts for web applications, which will be used to perform load testing on the application by integrating with OLT ( Oracle Load Testing tool ).

Automated web services testing:

Web services testing is about testing if the publicly exposed web services are behaving the way they are intended to work? Each web service is basically defined in form of a WSDL, each web service request will have a specific set of inputs and outputs or responses. OATS has the capability of creating a test script for testing web services, it can parse the WSDL and list out the requests that are available. Once we provide the required input parameter values, OATS can submit the request to the server and retrieve the response, the response can be compared to the expected responses and perform the testing.

Automated Database testing:

Database testing is about validating if all the CRUD operations are happening properly and in the current world of different entities or platforms for a single application i.e. web app, mobile app, other integrations. It is necessary that the data remains consistent and integrated across different types of applications.

Also, databases are heterogeneous, during the implementations and integrations there are high chances to face errors when dealing with large database systems. It is important to validate if the database system satisfies the ACID(Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) properties.

OATS can create scripts which can interact with database or with any UI based applications to validate if things are working as per the expectations of database testing.

Types of applications it can test

Web or Cloud applications testing

All the applications which are developed using web technologies can be test automated using OATS. Any activex or window based component would not be recognized by OATS.

Oracle EBS Application

• Oracle OAF pages
• Oracle Forms.
  

Oracle EBS Application is a huge application which has components spread across web, applet, forms, swing, telnet,Adobe Flex and other technology components. The major and critical part of Oracle EBS Application is covered by Oracle OAF Pages, Oracle Forms, Telnet and Adobe flex technology components. All of these could be automated directly using OATS, we need to select appropriate modules except for telnet. For telnet screens to be automated we need to take help of third party library files.

Oracle Siebel

Oracle Siebel application which offers the automation of most of the customer-facing operations, this application can be test automated using “Oracle Siebel” module of OATS.

Oracle JD Edwards

Oracle JD Edwards application delivers over 80 application modules to support a diverse set of business processes and key industry solutions. Oracle JD Edwards can be test automated using “Oracle JD Edwards” module of OATS

Oracle People Soft

Oracle Peoplesoft application that provides solution for Human Resource Management System, Financial Management Systems, Supply chain management systems, Customer relationship management, Enterprise performance management system and many other operations for differnt kinds of organisations. Oracle Peoplesoft can be test automated using OATS.

Fusion Applications

Oracle Fusion applications developed using “Oracle ADF”, also there are many custom applications are developed using  Oracle ADF. These applications can be automated through the “Oracle Fusion/ADF” module of OATS.

Telnet Applications

Telnet applications are generally very hard to automate to perform functional testing, there are a few third party libraries which can be associated with OATS to automate them.

Custom or Home Grown web based applications

Most of the times it is true that organisations have multiple applications to automate their business operations, it is always good to evaluate if Oracle Application testing suite will work for custom grown or home grown applications as well.

As long as the applications are accessible through web browser without any activex and applet components, Oracle Application test suite would be a best tool to have, as it will support automation of applications specified above and also the custom or home grown applications.

This is especially needed when, there are transactions which cut across the ERP applications and Custom grown applications, It is always better to have one test automation tool which can support automation of different types of applications and to test integration flows as well.

Note: I have tried to put all my views in this article, request the readers to give their views and inputs which can be added to the article. Please leave your feedback / queries in form of comments.