This is a little late, but better late than never. This is the last review of the sessions that I attended. This session was given by Tony Neaton from Griffith University in Australia. I saw several different sessions on the test framework, and each one added a little bit more. They didn’t completely overlap, which was very nice.
Here’s one quote that stood out at the beginning on of the session: “Testing is one of the biggest pains in the upgrade process.” This caught my attention because I really think the test framework will make a huge impact if we can just implement it.
The list of the “things the framework is not” helped explain what it is:
- not a load testing tool (because it doesn’t support logging in as multiple users)
- not a Robot scripting tool
- Not a test case management tool
Tony pointed out that the distinguishing feature is that it understands the PeopleTools framework and metadata. Other tools by contrast are either position-based (work off of x,y coordinates) or HTML tag based. As a result, the tests are not as fragile and require less maintenance.
He also pointed out that you can use the Test framework to test older tools versions. This feature is not supported by Oracle, but I understood they have been using it. They set up a Tools 8.51 instance solely for the test framework. Then, they pointed the testing at an older 8.48 system. In my opinion, the test framework provides ample benefit to justify upgrading the tools in your current environment right now.
What stood out to me is that Tony did a good job of showing off the Test framework. I think out of all the sessions, I got a better feel for the setup and use of the tool in this one. He even showed the Integration Broker setup and things that must be configured to make it all work. He discussed the Security Roles for the framework: PTF Administrator, PTF Editor, PTF User.
Another thing I thought was cool is that he showed how you can click on certain fields that you want to verify to make sure a particular value is in that field. Then, he also showed in the testing tool how you can edit the test and change things like what value it is expecting. One of the coolest things he showed is how you can change the test to loop through all the rows in a grid looking for the value. This way, other unrelated data in the grid doesn’t break the test.
All in all, I really liked this session for showing me how the framework worked. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a demo must be worth a million. The demos were all videos, and I think a live demo might be have been slightly nicer. But, you can go and download the demos since they were prerecorded.