I want to share with you some thoughts on Testing Oracle EBS applications. Combination of Automation and Manual test scripts with right key ingredients of Test Users and post cloned data are the significant thing which enable not only faster; but also productive testing cycles. In my opinion, the statement ‘pure automation makes testing cycle faster’ – works only in a perfect world. In order to achieve simple to complex back to back testing cycles in different test environments, combination of these methods work extremely well with the grain of salt. This needs a great deal of understanding of both sides of functional and automation of each test objective to categorise whether one needs to be tested by automation tool or manually.
Testing Goals
In order to accelerate one’s testing, maintaining the Test Users in the appropriate way by defining and assigning the right job, position, essential responsibilities, set ups, as well as granting vital privileges accordingly are the key. Prior to automation, weaving manual test script with right prerequisites and input steps by using right production cloned data would help to attain major testing goals faster with more informed results. This approach helped us to accomplish numerous testing goals along the way for monthly patch testing, multiple project go lives & technology upgrade projects.
Right Test Scenarios
The foremost thing is, identifying right Test scenarios which are critical for business. These repeatable business processes can be classified under regression testing category. Test users job/position should be same as real business user in test environment to mimic the respective business scenario. This way the results are always accurate. As part of script development, prior execution of manual script is important to weave the manual test script in a right way with right prerequisites, detailed action steps and selection of cloned ‘Test data’. In order to achieve more functional testing in less time, embedding the relevant sub-processes in the main test script is an important step. The prerequisites can be segregated and developed as reusable actions; and these can be used across the modules based on the test script requirement. This process allows one to automate the test script seamlessly. Also, we used the concept of leveraging. After the development of test scripts is done for a specific Operating Unit, whether in terms of manual or automation or both, we leveraged the respective test scripts to different OU with minimal changes accordingly by using their customization, test users and test data. The criteria helped us to accelerate the test script development process in a faster mode. Complex end to end processes are advisable to run under manual regression. The automation sometimes ironically takes more time than manual testing as simple custom reports would illustrate as well as lessons learned along the way. The combination of manual and automated test script library works extremely well in multiple environments in terms of regression and smoke testing during any kind of technology upgrades, project go-lives in non-shared, and shared instance with the existence of different business groups along with their customized localization, multiple languages and multiple currencies; and we are the testament.
Here are some of the points you should be thinking about for Testing Oracle EBS applications.
1. How to decide whether manual or automation testing is suitable for a given test scenario
2. How to Test more with less time
3. How to weave Test users and post cloned data; and right prerequisites for a given test scenario
4. Use of detailed manual scripts with production cloned data and leveraging
5. Executing test scripts in multiple environments with no prior preparation.
