In this article we can understand what are the major advantages of openscript in software test automation. I hope this article can give an insight why a client or a test automation engineer or a IT manger need to chose openscript for their software test automation.
I am trying to put forward few of the points that popped up about my favorite test automation tool.
You can also learn openscript @ Openscript tutorials.
1. Object Identification: openscript follows the globally accepted xpath mechanism to identify any web based application UI component. It helps in reducing the efforts for any test automation engineer to learn quickly and importantly as its a global standard even if there any high level changes in software application development processes the identification mechanism remains same and unaffected.
Openscript can automate any kind of web based application and one of the biggest advantage is it has oracle forms recognition capability, which in otherwise is not available in most of the available test automation tools in the market. The only other test automation tool which has this capability is QTP and is highly costly affair to chose.
2. Extensibility: openscript is built on a highly robust framework that is eclipse, enables developers to make their hands dirty to come up with splendid features and extend the ability of openscript. For example: openscript has no support for telnet application test automation but with the help of third party open source libraries one can automate the telnet application.
3. Test automation framework: openscript can support any kind of test automation frameworks which are available in market, naming a few like Data Driven, Keyword Driven, Modular, Component Driven and any other custom frameworks. openscript is highly robust and easy to build any new test automation framework. I recommend to read the article what is an automation framework to understand more about it.
4. Record and Playback: I can say openscript is one among the best test automation tools which has a very good record and playback features, the time that is required to start a test script execution once we click Playback button of openscript is highly negligible compared to many other test automation tools. The recording process is pretty easy that even a non programmer can just click record button and take it forward to create the test automation scripts.
5. Support for RegEX and Regular Expressions: With the help of RegEX and Regular expressions mechanisms we can develop highly stable test automation scripts which can run across different instances of same application, what I mean about instances is like we generally have Dev Instance, QA Instance, Unit Test Instance, Production Instance of a single application. This capability enables openscript to smartly work with dynamic content and UI components identification attributes in web application.
6. Easy migration and Up gradation of scripts: With various options available with openscript it is very easy to port scripts from one location another and also can easily upgrade to latest versions of openscript.
7. Parallel execution support: The architecture of openscript allows to execute scripts simultaneously and gives multiple opportunities to reduce the execution efforts.
8. In-built utility objects and function libraries: openscript comes with a huge number of function libraries and utility objects, for example:
- If we need to connect to any database we can use the utility objects and work with user friendly methods to interact with database and perform any kind of database operation.
- If we need to work with files like text, xml, excel, etc.. openscript has In-built utility objects with user friendly methods to perform all kinds of file operations required.
There are much more to know about, writing them all here would not leave room to discuss about other advantages of openscript.
9. Supported environments: openscript supports huge list of application environments like the following:
- Oracle OAF applications
- Oracle Forms
- Fusion Applications
- Adobe Flex
- Custom web Applications
- Oracle Sieble
- Oracle JD Edwards
- Oracle Peoplesoft
- Telnet ( by using third party open source libraries )
- Web Services
- Database Testing
openscript has also good support for test automation on different web browsers like:
- Internet Explorer
- Fire Fox
- Google Chrome ( currently supports playback features, I guess they are working on recording features now. )
10. Java technology: openscript has the best programming language as the scripting language, enables testers and programmers to explore and solve any kind of problems.
11. Easy to use: Though openscript works with java as a scripting language, the statements or instructions related to test automation is very easy to understand and work with. Any automation tester should be able to pick up the pace in just couple of days. Also, it has a lot of GUI features enable non programmer to do everything which a regular automation tester can do. Even operations like parametrize test scripts with database, csv files could be done using simple wizards.
12. Pre-build components: openscript comes with a addon application Oracle Flow Builder which has a huge number of pre-build components which can be utilized to create end to end scenarios for Oracle EBS Application test automation, high reduction is script development as most of them are already available, we should just make customizations based on changes done at Oracle EBS application side. You can read about Oracle Flow Builder and Insights of Oracle Flow Builder automation framework to learn more about it.
13. Support for different types of testing: openscript comes with support for different kinds of testing like Load Testing, Web Services Testing, Functional testing.
14. Results viewer: openscript comes with best results viewer, displays best in depth detail of each step that get executed during playback of test automation scripts. It has a beautiful tree view pane where each step can be drilled down and understand details at each step of execution. You can easily come up with your customized report as it has the Java language support to parse the generated xml , html reports of openscript.
15. Exception handling: openscript with java language support can take care of exception handling for better stability of scripts. openscript also has good error recovery options to take care of the test executions like what has to be done when there is an error like object is not found. options like whether to fail the execution or skip the script and continue or do you want the execution to be paused etc.
16. Maintenance and re-usability: With the architecture and script language(java) of openscript test scripts makes it easily maintainable and re-usable.
Note: I have put my view points, request the readers to share their feedback or queries in form of comments for the article.
Please explain the parallel Execution support .. Does it mean it will execute the test cases in different machines? like Selenium GRID. I would like to know if its really possible
Basically open script allows to execute multiple scripts in parallel in a single machine. And regarding to similarity with Selenium GRID, it does not execute in different machines by default, but none the less it is quite possible to do build something which can let execute scripts in different machines.
Very happy to see your query.. keep asking your queries I am happy to share my responses and knowledge.
Hi Srinivas,
Can we automate Flash objects using OpenScript . Are there any thirdparty libraries that can be used ?
Regards,
Moin
Openscript of OATS can automate Adobe Flex based applications and not Flash objects. It doesn’t need any third party library for this, it comes with its own module for Adobe Flex applications.
If you are in front of Openscript tool or you can open it once and navigate to Script -> Script Properties, in the popup window you can see the list of all modules that openscript can automate including for functional or load or webservices testing.
Hope I could clear your doubt, please do revert to me in case of any more queries.
Thanks again for reaching us, stay tuned we are coming up with more interesting articles and tutorial based articles.
Hi Srinivas,
tried using Flex but now that my application is flash based I would like to have one . Also Mikael Fries ( Director Product from Oracle) has confirmed that OATS is not compatible with flash . Is there a workaround for it in OATS for are there any other tools that help us with this .
Regards,
Moin
Yes that is true, OATS does not support flash as of now. Well I have not worked much on this but you can give a try with few other tools like selenium (with supportive plugin to automate) , Ranorex, etc..
May be checkout this video tutorial which shows about how to use selenium for flash automation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4Jaf_3uYo
Thanks for the Info Srinivas.
I will try to explore and see if I can use Selenium .
Regards,
Moin
Hi,
I am trying to learn OpenScript, I just want to know where do we have to write our script I mean Do we have intergrate with Eclipse and Is there any free online tutorial available.?
Hi Sreedhar,
Nice to have you here in testingtools.co , we have good number of articles on functional automation testing for Oracle Application Testing Suite, also have one tutorial index, which I would keep adding. In case you are looking for a dedicated training do let me know, I will be more than happy to help you out.
Otherwise you can follow this link : Oracle Application Testing Suite Tutorial
And for your query, we need to write script in Code View or you can use Tree View to insert steps in to script, ideally for complex logic and all you need to go to “Code View” and put in your code
Hi,
Do you know if its possible to use xpath axes, for what I read openscript uses a non standard xpath 🙁
Regards,
Raul
Yes it uses different kind of xpath than the most commonly used one. May i know what is the reason you want it to work for xpath axes? also can you elaborate what is xpath axes?
Hi Srinivas,
I just started working in my new job for automation. This company is using Oracle Apps, Forms, Databases. Now they wanted me to explore OATS for their E2E flows. As I am going through your blog and site, I am very impressed. I think that, OATS can be used for my purpose. Here is my question, since they are already using Oracle products, do they need to pay and get licenses for OATS? As per my understanding, Yes, they have to. Please confirm that my assumption is correct.
Yes Sailalitha,
If your company does not have a license for OATS, they need to buy a separate license for OATS.
Thank you for reaching out to us.
How to get this License information about the product. I need some pointers for this. Please advice me.
Does Oracle Support people come set-up and configure every thing for us or how does it work?
Sailalitha
Best way is to check with Oracle guys only, as they might give special discounts based on the relation between your company and them, along with number of licenses you are looking for.
Hi Srinivas,
we have a lot of test cases in HP ALM. we need to automate them using OATS. Is that a possibility to integrate ALM and Openscript? I looked over the site but integration part is not clear to me. My understanding is • ALM Octane must be used. Is that my view is correct or not please let me know.
Hi Sailatha,
Thank you for reaching out to us, well to my knowledge I am not sure if you can use ALM Octane to trigger openscript executions, but as ALM Octane has APIs, which allows your openscript scripts to update test case status at the end of each automation script.
I only prefer OTM ( Oracle Test Manager to trigger Openscript scripts )
Thank you,
Regards,
Srinivas
Can you please make an article to explain how open script allows to execute multiple scripts in parallel in a single machine
It is pretty straight forward. just call each script from different command prompt using the runscript bat file you can refer to this link where I explained it clearly “How to trigger script run from command line”