One of the most common pieces of feedback I got from attending the Oracle Utilities User Group and the Oracle Utilities Customer Edge Conference in Austin recently was that the approach that Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator is taking is different and logical.
Traditionally, test automation is really coding using the language provided by the tool. The process of using it is recording a screen, with the data for the test, and having that become a script in whatever language supported by the tool. To use the script for other tests, either means you have to record it again or get some programmer, fluent in the scripting language to modify the script. The issue becomes when the user interface changes for any reason. This will most likely make the script now invalid so the whole process is repeated. You end up spending more time building scripts than actually testing.
Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator takes a different and more cost effective approach:
- Component Based Testing. Oracle Utilities Test Accelerator uses the tried and tested Oracle Testing approach by exposing test assets as reusable components in a pre-built library. These components do not use the online as the API but use the same underlying API used by online and other channels into the product. This isolates the test from changes to any of the channels as it is purely focused on functionality not user experience testing only.
- More Than Online Testing. Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator can test all channels (online, web service, mobile and batch). This allows maximum flexibility in testing across diverse business processes.
- Orchestrate Not Build. Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator allows for your business processes to be orchestrated as a sequence of components which can be within a single supported Oracle Utilities product, across supported Oracle Utilities products, within the same channel or across multiple channels. The orchestration reduces the need for relying on traditional recording and maximizes flexibility.
- No Touch Scripting. Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator generates Selenium based code that requires no adjustment to operate which can be executed from an Eclipse Plugin or directly from the tool (the latter is available in 6.0.0.1.0).
- Data is Independent of Process. During the orchestration data is not required to build out the business process. Data can be added at any time during the process including after the business process is completed and/or at runtime. This allows business processes to be reused with multiple test data sets. Test data can entered using the Workbench directly, via an external file and in the latest release (6.0.0.1.0) it can be populated via test data extractors.
- Content from Product QA. The Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator comes with pre-built component libraries, provided by Product QA, for over 30 version/product combinations for Oracle Utilities products. The license, which is user based, gives you access to any of the libraries appropriate for your site, regardless of the number of non-production environments or number of Oracle Utilities product it is used against.
These differences reduce your costs and risk when adopting automated testing. For more information about Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator refer to Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator (Doc Id: 2014163.1) available from My Oracle Support.