Understanding the Limitations of Open-Source Frameworks in Oracle Cloud Testing
Oracle Cloud has taken on more end-to-end business processes and has a dynamic update environment where patches and updates are frequent. Lacking proficiency in testing fast can lead to challenges in managing time-to-market pressures.
While open-source frameworks have been quite popular for test automation, are they well-suited to meet the testing needs of Oracle Cloud? While they work for basic test automation, they can impede testing quality if they do not account for the unique demands of Oracle Cloud.
Why Use Open-Source Frameworks for Oracle Cloud Testing?
Selecting the right test automation tool plays a significant role in driving the success of technology applications. When it is testing a complete ecosystem comprised of multiple moving parts, the testing tool has to do most of the heavy lifting for successful outcomes.
Cost-Efficiency
Open-source frameworks are gaining popularity for Oracle Cloud testing mainly because they are cost-effective and offer flexibility. In addition, these tools do not have recurring license or maintenance fees and hence help in containing testing costs.
Most of the open-source frameworks have a large community of users that provides great support. These tools give testers more flexibility and help them avoid vendor lock-in, making them more flexible and cost-effective.
One of the major draws of open-source frameworks for Oracle Cloud testing has been the ability of these tools to be used for GUI testing. In addition, many of these frameworks also allow developers to write UI tests using Oracle JDeveloper.
Flexibility
Open-source frameworks offer great flexibility to perform parallel testing without hassles. Some open-source frameworks also have built-in automation components that ease the test design and setup process.
What are the Limitations of Open-Source Frameworks in Oracle Cloud Testing?
Mitigating business risks, reducing costs, and saving time and resources become challenging without comprehensive test automation capabilities.
The proliferation of technology across the enterprise also causes challenges for open-source frameworks, as most of them struggle with cross-technology functionalities. In addition, the following factors can also present significant issues:
- The demands of security elements
- Navigating the needs of complex web elements like iframes, popups, and menus in Oracle apps
- Testing the heavily integrated Oracle cloud application ecosystem thoroughly
To this end, here's a more profound look into the limitations of open-source frameworks in Oracle Cloud testing:
Long-Term Sustainability
Ensuring the sustainability of open-source frameworks becomes tough when testing Oracle Cloud. Every change, a new release, a patch, a simple data or code change, or even a name change in a field has to be thoroughly tested at speed for enterprises to leverage the benefits of Oracle Cloud.
This dynamic environment thereby demands greater flexibility and agility. Most open-source frameworks do not offer low or no code capabilities and demand programming knowledge. Maintaining and reusing these tests also becomes challenging since this environment is extremely fast-moving. Checking for broken tests, assessing if the tests are comprehensive enough, managing test data, and creating a clear testing trail - all become tough to sustain because of the limited capacity of open-source frameworks.
Security Issues
Enterprises are hosting mission-critical information on the Oracle Cloud. The infrastructure handles large financial systems, government workloads, or data-intensive applications. Oracle Cloud infrastructure's next-gen architecture specifically meets the needs of today's enterprise and has robust security features that ensure safety without compromising performance.
Most Oracle Cloud applications, for example, have established security restrictions. In addition, elements like two-factor authentication are quite common in this ecosystem. Working all these security elements into open-source tests is complicated and often unachievable with a single tool. The nature of open-source frameworks also makes them unfit to meet certain regulatory and governance demands of industries such as healthcare, banking and finance, pharma, etc.
End-to-End Testing
Achieving end-to-end testing is critical to achieving the benefits promised by Oracle Cloud. However, the applications in this ecosystem, including Oracle applications, are integrated with third-party applications. These applications also contain many complicated web elements like iframes, popups, and menus. Oracle also releases quarterly updates with major changes.
All these factors increase the technical complexity of the environment and render open-source tools inadequate for handling the heavy lifting needed for test automation. This prevents end-to-end testing of the entire application ecosystem. In addition, the incompatibility of open-source testing frameworks with Java applet technology which is used in Oracle Forms, further impedes end-to-end testing.
Maintenance & Compatibility
Open-source frameworks also present some maintenance and compatibility challenges when testing Oracle Cloud. The testing tools have to enable easy automation and accelerate testing velocity while being easy to maintain to keep up with the dynamic Oracle update ecosystem.
Oracle Cloud apps undergo quarterly updates. After each release, the entire ecosystem has to be tested thoroughly, and functional and technical analysis has to be performed to understand the impact of these changes. Enterprises using open-source testing frameworks have to code to set up and maintain these tests, making test automation and test maintenance tedious and time-consuming affairs in the long run.
What are Some Open-Source Frameworks/Tools for Oracle Cloud Testing?
Selenium
Selenium is one of the most popular open-source frameworks for Oracle Cloud testing. A large community of users and the capability of web GUI testing contribute to its popularity.
Selenium also offers a suite of tools for Oracle Cloud Testing. Tools like Selenium IDE, a record-and-play tool, make test setup easier. Selenium Grid enables parallel testing. Enterprises can download and install the Selenium IDE add-on on various browsers. Selenium also allows developers to write UI tests using Oracle JDeveloper.
However, Selenium does not offer the comprehensive test automation capabilities that the Oracle Cloud needs. Some key challenges are as follows:
- Compatibility with only web (or browser-based) applications. It does not work with any desktop Oracle application or other non-web technologies.
- Requires programming language knowledge as it is not a no-code platform, making test creation and maintenance time-consuming and effort-intensive.
- Unsuited for end-to-end testing because of technical complications and incompatibility with Oracle forms.
- Unsuitable for automating AJAX-driven applications like Oracle Cloud apps because of expert programming knowledge.
- Does not offer robust test reporting or troubleshooting capabilities, making it challenging to identify and fix failed tests. These tests also become more time-consuming to fix.
- Limitations with respect to cross-technology functionality. Therefore, it’s not well-suited for end-to-end testing.
- Getting speedy and targeted help in the event of technical issues is hard.
Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS)
The Oracle Application Testing Suite, or OATS, is Oracle's own test automation tool compatible with all Oracle applications. This tool has built-in automation components that simplify and accelerate the test design and setup process.
OATS ensures the quality and availability of both web applications and services. It is a suite of three products, namely Oracle Functional Testing (OFT), Oracle Load Testing, and Oracle Test Manager. These tools take care of functional testing, provide load testing support, and manage all activities related to test requirements.
While OATS has built-in automation libraries and allows users to create automation scripts for load and performance testing along with functional and regression testing, it has some challenges. These are:
- Limited in its cross-technology functionality that allows OATS to only automate Oracle and web-based products
- Needs additional automation tools for complete test coverage
- Demands proficiency in OpenScript language for Oracle testing, which can be limiting for non-technical teams
- Cannot conduct end-to-end testing without additional tools
- Comparatively more expensive than other test automation tools
The ACCELQ Advantage for Oracle Test Automation
ACCELQ solves all the challenges of testing the Oracle Cloud. This comprehensive, AI-powered test automation platform is designed to meet the specific needs of the Oracle Cloud. With this platform, enterprises can easily run and automate testing for all Oracle applications.
Accelerate Testing Velocity and Test Footprint
ACCELQ is a codeless platform and allows even business users to test applications. It automates test case generation. Its comprehensive framework enables API and UI test automation in the same simplified flow. CI-driven regression suite executions and the capacity to correlate business processes and corresponding API for complete coverage further accelerate test coverage and velocity.
Further, the ACCELQ platform allows enterprises to check both Oracle Cloud apps and desktop applications like Oracle EBS using the codeless approach. Enabling rapid automation leveraging the self-healing Oracle object identification capabilities further makes ACCELQ well-suited for automating testing of Oracle Cloud.
Manage Dynamic Elements and Conduct End-to-End Testing
The ACCELQ framework is specially designed to manage the nuanced Oracle Cloud ecosystem. This platform allows testers to test dynamic elements and allows AI-based codeless interactions with Oracle objects embedded iframes and trees.
The real-time alignment with Oracle product releases and live cloud links further simplifies testing by ensuring that automation assets are updated automatically. Since the tool can manage dynamic elements and is compatible with new technologies, it also facilitates end-to-end testing.
Ease of Test Generation, Setup, and Management
ACCELQ's AI capabilities also make test generation, setup, and management faster and easier. It has the capabilities for API test case management, test planning, execution, and also for tracking governance. In addition, businesses can directly correlate business processes and corresponding API for complete coverage.
Automated updates to the ACCELQ object library with every Oracle release further improve test automation outcomes and keep the ecosystem running smoothly.
The feature-rich codeless platform irons out all the test automation challenges for Oracle Cloud. In essence, ACCELQ capably handles complex test scenarios and delivers the provisions needed for continuous delivery. It also gives the flexibility to customize Oracle testing projects along with providing support for evolving technology.
Connect with us to see how ACCELQ can transform Oracle Cloud testing and allow you to gain greater confidence in your application ecosystem.
Geosley Andrades
Director, Product Evangelist at ACCELQ.
Geosley is a Test Automation Evangelist and Community builder at ACCELQ. Being passionate about continuous learning, Geosley helps ACCELQ with innovative solutions to transform test automation to be simpler, more reliable, and sustainable for the real world.
