This section focuses on the new features implemented in this release. While these notes provide high-level information, refer to the Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator Installation and Administration Guide and Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator User's Guide for comprehensive guidelines.

Flow step validations are critical to a flow definition as they help ascertain whether a given flow step has passed or failed during the flow run. Before the Condition Based Flow Validation Definition feature, the validations had to be defined using functions. Though validations can be defined using metadata, function based validation required you to understand the library of functions to be used. With the condition based flow validation feature you no longer need to analyse or understand the functions. You can very quickly and easily define complex validations of a flow step using the Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator’s advanced and intuitive user interface. This reduces the flow development times while increasing the ease of defining validations in the flow.

The Condition Based Flow Validation feature allows you to define flow step validations through the user interface, without the usage of functions. This feature is available under the Post Validations section of component's test data definition in the Flow Management page. You can add one or more post validations using the condition based validations. All the validations that can be defined using function based validations and more, can be define using the condition based validations. The user interface to define the condition based validations allows you to select an element in the response or entire response or even a variable that you plan to validate. You can then select a condition for validation, such as 'equals', 'contains' etc. The conditions that can be applied for validating the element in question, have been categorized into String conditions, Number conditions and Datetime conditions. You can select the appropriate condition under the specific category as per your requirement. As most conditions need a value that needs to be compared to, the third field on the Condition Based Validation Definition page, allows you to specify the value to be compared to. In cases where date time comparisons are involved, a field for specifying the date time format is also provided. In summary, the feature allows for greater flexibility in validation definitions while also improving the ease of flow development, to a significant extent.

Generation of methodical or randomized test data is an implicit requirement in test automation development. The ability to specify the test data generation using intuitive user interface reduces the time it takes to develop a test automation flow, while making it easier for you to define the kind of generation routine that you want to apply.

Using the Test Data Generation Based on Conditions feature, you can now define these data generation routines through simple and easy to use interface. This feature supports generation of multiple types of test data, namely numbers, string and dates, which caters to most of the test data generation requirements in test automation flows. You can specify the ranges, formats, and specific conditions for generation of numbers, strings and dates, respectively. You can specify the generation conditions against specific elements in the test data GUI of a component in a flow. During the course of the flow run, Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator will interpret the condition based definition and will generate the test data and assign it to the element, appropriately

The Base Component Extension feature removes the need to create new custom components in Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator to test your customization of supported Oracle Utilities cloud service. This feature helps to make sure that any updates to the base components in Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator are automatically applied to the test automation flows that use your extended components. This also reduces maintenance effort during upgrades, as the base changes are part of the updates to the base component on which your extension is added.

You can easily extend the product delivered base components in Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator by adding your custom schema elements, similar to the extensions Oracle Utilities Application Framework objects. You can add the custom elements to the component through the component definition GUI. When a flow is built using this extended component, you will be able to provide test data for both the base and extended schema elements through the same test data GUI on the Flow Definition page. You can add or remove the extended elements in the component definition based on your requirement, across upgrades. The need for creating a new custom component to add custom elements on top of the base component has been made obsolete with this feature.

The navigation and access to components and flows under a product has been made easier with this feature. Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator generally may have a number of product versions in the flow tree structure based on the number of upgrades being tested/managed. With the workspace products feature, you can focus on specific product versions that you are currently working on, so you do not need to navigate and search for the product version in the Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator component or flow tree structure. You can bring specific product versions into focus by adding them to your workspace based on the product version that you need to work on. The workspace is specific to a user, so each user can add or remove different product versions in their own workspace.

The ability to view/edit a flow, run the flow, and view the flow run history through the use of buttons removes the need to access them by right clicking the context menu on the flow name. This makes it easier and quicker to perform these operations through the GUI.

The component selection frame on the Flow Definition page auto collapses based on the flow status, giving you more space on the UI to work on the flow definition. The component selection frame is automatically in the collapsed state if the flow is in any status other than the ‘in-progress’ status, as the components can be added to an in-progress flow.

This feature has been designed to reduce the flow management, flow run time, and effort while making sure Oracle Utilities Testing Accelerator is even more intuitive to use.