SAP Test Automation – Solution Approaches

Posted by Sudip Naha in

 Testing

Aug 16, 2010 | Total views: 73

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Sudip Naha
Program Director
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Reduce maintenance effort to address test case flow changes


Let us see the maintenance effort involved in the approach of keyword implementation that I mentioned in my previous post. If the test data changes or to run the same scripts using multiple test data sets, we will not have to change the automated scripts. If a business process like “Procurement to Pay” involves additional transactions or change in flow of transactions, we just have to rearrange the transaction level keywords. However, if a particular transaction flow changes or some additional fields are included, it would require modifications in the code associated with the transaction keyword. However small the effort may be, manual test engineers or functional consultants would not be comfortable in doing them; automation engineers have to be involved.

We can avoid this by implementing keywords at a SAP GUI widget level, like “SAPGUIEditBox” for text box, “SAPGUITable” for table etc. We also have to implement keywords for the actions to be performed like “Click” to click a button, “Set” to enter a value in the edit box. So a combination of keywords along with widget identifiers can be used to perform specific actions and verifications on each SAP screen. These keywords can be organized to form scripts corresponding to higher level keywords like TCodes.

If any transaction flow changes or additional fields are included, functional consultants can easily make those changes in spreadsheets or GUI input. The involvement of automation engineers is reduced since the keyword codes once developed would not change across the SAP screens since the technology used to develop them is the same.

My next post will talk about approaches for execution and management of the automated test cases.