Streamlining Software Quality: Oracle Test Automation Explained
Oracle Cloud is growing, and enterprises are looking for ways to accelerate their release cycles, reduce Turn Around Time (TAT), and enable continuous delivery. First, however, they must automate testing and drive application defensibility to achieve these goals.
Undoubtedly, the in-vogue agile and DevOps practices have drawn lots of attention to the world of test automation.
There is an increasing preference for automation. As a result, the global test automation market size might reach USD 28.8 Billion by 2024!
As far as the Oracle Cloud infrastructure is concerned, it is evident that the Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and the likes are ideal for building and running IT. And since Oracle is consistently scaling up its cloud infrastructure, more and more enterprises are likely to leverage the Oracle Cloud and its offerings. To this effect, they will have to ensure that their applications work seamlessly across the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – something that test automation could help with.
What is Oracle Test Automation?
Oracle Test Automation is targeted at driving end-to-end test coverage through automated tests across applications being run using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Test automation ensures the seamless execution of all test cases essential for validating the adherence to the cloud updates and features, identifying bugs in the existing code, and verifying that the system works as expected.
Furthermore, automating testing for Oracle Cloud helps teams to:
- Execute tests in a quick, continuous, and reproducible fashion
- Ensure zero-defect delivery from the DevOps team
- Minimize manual efforts, increase productivity, and reduce testing costs
- Minimize the testing effort in case of future changes
- Increase security and compliance to regulatory standards as Oracle platform upgrades are tested and validated
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Challenges with Oracle Test Automation
As impressive as Oracle Test Automation sounds, it is not always easy to sustain success. And this is by no means a new problem. The following are the typical challenges that enterprises encounter:
Swift Product Changes and Multi-level Software Updates
The product features change during the software life cycle, new software versions come up, and the old ones are deprecated. Owing to the fast-evolving Oracle Cloud, these changes are frequent.
In such scenarios, it is critical to test both the existing and new codebases and the respective combinations wherein one version may be retired while another is brought into play.
The enhancements or new features might also introduce new bugs or put the existing ones under stress. So, testing the various permutations and combinations of versions becomes practical and mandatory.
Ineffective and Resource Intensive Script-based Automation
Tests are run using scripts, and they are not easy to maintain. The scripts may fail due to the differences in environments or even due to the node-specific properties of the platform. This is mainly because of the inherent complexity of regression, repeatability, and scalability challenges.
An example would be the inability of scripts to identify granular characteristics and parameters of Oracle Forms, which are constructed from Java applets.
Besides, the development of script-based frameworks for automation can be a long and cumbersome process, not to mention the challenging and expertise-entailing maintenance of these frameworks. As a result, this may compromise the test coverage and lead to a range of issues.
Need for Test Automation Specialists
Automating Oracle testing on Oracle Cloud involves dealing with diverse technologies and interfaces across the infrastructure. It demands the expertise of test automation specialists to design, deploy and run automated tests effectively with minimum manual interference.
How to Perform Oracle Test Automation?
The Oracle Cloud infrastructure facilitates a resourceful and feature-laden environment for enterprise-grade applications. However, to ensure that these applications are bug-free, it is imperative to perform test automation on Oracle Cloud diligently.
Following are the key steps involved in the same:
1. Modularize the architecture
Modularizing the architecture facilitates the easy handling of the application at multiple levels. It further helps organize the structure and encapsulate each microservice or sub-component.
2. Select the right tools
The next step is to select the right test automation tool for testing the oracle cloud application. While choosing a test automation tool, it’s essential to consider a few fundamental points, such as: Does it support the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Does it facilitate codeless (no-code) automation? Does it help with self-healing? and, Does it expedite fully-fledged API test automation?
3. Create a test framework
The next step is to create a test framework by maintaining and recording the test cases related to various services. After that, each microservice or sub-component must be configured accordingly and automated. This will enable writing functional, regression, and scalability tests. It will also help leverage prebuilt test cases from the Oracle Cloud library.
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Best Practices for Performing Oracle Test Automation
The following are key aspects that need consideration while performing test automation:
Choose the right test cases for the automation
Customarily, the test cases for automation are selected based on the expected outcome and the acceptance criteria. This translates to segregating the test cases per the functional and non-functional aspects. Also identifying the scope of automating the redundant, error-prone, high-risk, or manually intensive tests.
Select the right automation tool/partner
The evergreen pragmatic need to automate test assets is imperative. However, one of the primary pitfalls that can harbor the onset of failure is overlooking the holistic test automation options available. In other words, test automation is more than just putting in scripts to the test automation framework. One needs to comprehend the underlying logic behind using the right tool for the job.
Build a robust test automation strategy
Test automation is integral for future growth, and enterprises must build a powerful test automation strategy to leverage the same. This requires a strong understanding of the feasibility of automating test assets and the return on investment for project-specific needs.
ACCELQ and Oracle Test Automation
Automating test cases for Oracle’s business applications requires tools that can handle complex test scenarios, which ACCELQ facilitates.
Our feature-rich codeless test automation support for Oracle helps with continuous delivery and provisions the optimum level of flexibility and customization to meet the specific needs of testing projects on Oracle apps.
Are you interested in a ready-to-go, no-code framework for Oracle test automation? Let’s have a chat.
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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.
