1 Introduction

Oracle Flow Builder (OFB) is a Keyword-driven testing application that business analysts and QA engineers use to build business test automation flows. The test automation flows can be translated into executable OpenScript scripts. Technical QA engineers define and implement keywords for the Web/Oracle E-Business Suite application's components. Business analysts and QA engineers then connect components together to define a larger business process, or "flow" and generate OpenScript scripts to automate testing of the application. This chapter introduces the Oracle Flow Builder application and provides an overview of the features available. It contains the following sections:

1.1 About Oracle Flow Builder

The Oracle Flow Builder application is a keyword-driven component based testing framework for testing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Oracle Flow Builder starter kit includes 2100+ components and 200 flows for testing Oracle E-Business Suite.

The application consists of the following features:

Figure 1-1 Main Window Home Page

Description of Figure 1-1 follows
Description of "Figure 1-1 Main Window Home Page"

The Oracle Flow Builder application consists of the following pages:

  • Home: shows the logged in users' Access Rights with options for requesting changes and lists recent notifications and components. Roles and permissions information is also provided.

  • Components: shows the currently available component tree and provides options for adding new components and defining the keywords and parameters that define the component code.

  • Component Sets: shows the currently available component sets tree and provides options for adding new component sets that link multiple individual components that are used together frequently in test flows.

  • Flows: shows the currently available flows tree and provides options for adding new flows that define the sequence of components, component sets, and test data to use to generate test automation scripts.

  • Notifications: shows the informational and To Do messages generated during use of the Oracle Flow Builder application.

  • History: provides options for searching the history of components, component sets, flows, and users.

  • Settings: provides options for specifying the email notification preferences.

  • Reports: provide options for searching and viewing reports for components, component sets, and flows.

  • Administration: provides options for setting up the release and product structure within the application, setting up the Email server, managing function libraries, managing approvals, and managing product family access.

1.2 Basic Processes

This section describes the main steps involved with using the application after it is installed and the initial setup has been performed.

  • An administrator defines the Releases, Product Families, Products, and Features in the Oracle Flow Builder application.

  • An administrator sets up user roles and assigns privileges.

  • Users request registration from the login page. Upon approval of the user registration, the user will be able to log in and request product family access rights.

  • Component developers define components and component code (keywords and parameters) in the component library. Component developers must be very familiar with the application to be tested in order to define components and component code (keywords, objects, and parameters).

  • A designated approver approves or rejects component code created by component developers. Designated approvers review the keywords and parameters defined in the component code for accuracy and completeness and approve or reject the code.

  • After approval, components become available to be added to component sets and flows.

  • Component developers define component sets (groups of components in a set or sequence that can be added to a flow as a group).

  • Flow developers create flows by adding components and/or component sets and defining test data for each component in the flow. Flow developers must be familiar with the application to be tested in order to select components and component sets for the flow and define the test data for each component.

  • Once a flow is finalized, flow developers set the flow to "assembled" status.

  • Flow developers or other testers generate OpenScript code to an OpenScript zip file. The OpenScript zip file can be used in OpenScript to perform functional tests against the application under test.