CBTA – Test automation tool from SAP
When you think of test automation in SAP, eCATT comes to mind for the first time, although its successor, CBTA, has been extending eCATT functionality since Solution Manager 7.1 to include various interface technologies such as SAP CRM WebClient, Web Dynpro ABAP, Business Server Pages (BSP) SAP-GUI for HTML, SAP Portal, Java Web Dynpro, URL (HTML pages) and SAPUI5.
The reason may lie in the rather complex installation or configuration, but what you get for it, can be seen.
CBTA is part of the test automation framework (TAF) and the component-based approach (as is the case with the partner tool TTA) makes the test scripts more robust against changes. It would be an exaggeration to claim that this allows the business to create the automated test cases. However, in return, it is no longer necessary to have an IT “crack” with scripting knowledge, as was the case with eCATT, to create automated test cases.
Integration via the TAF requires that the automated test cases be created in the solution documentation as a test configuration. This can be thought of as a data pot that contains all the necessary information like cogwheels and links them together. Each of the gears is interchangeable. This means, for example, that a test script can be executed on different test systems with different test users by simply maintaining the other logon data in the System Data Container without having to create everything again. New with SPS13, there is even an extra area for password management with an option for mass maintenance.
Die erste wichtige Angabe für die Test Configuration ist die des Test Tools (aktuell stehen Enterprise Kunden CBTA, eCATT und TTA zur Verfügung). Das Testskript wird im Hintergrund generiert, sobald alle Testschritte mit dem CBTA Client erfolgreich aufgenommen wurden. Im System Data Container werden Anmeldedaten des betroffenen Testsystems hiThe first important specification for the test configuration is that of the test tool (currently available to Enterprise customers are CBTA, eCATT and TTA). The test script is generated in the background as soon as all test steps have been successfully recorded with the CBTA client. Logon data of the test system concerned is stored in the System Data Container. Finally, the test data maintained in the Test Data Container can optionally be connected to the rest. In addition, TAF’s Test Composition Environment offers the possibility of concatenating several Test Cases from different Test Tools into one E2E Test Case. The transfer of parameters between the different test cases is realized with eCATT.
Through the integration with TAF, the user is additionally provided with various Test Suite functionalities and can benefit from test plan creation, dashboard usage, tester worklist, focused build test execution and even the process for test case correction via ITSM. This seamless and hassle-free integration to several Solution Manager tools clearly shows that CBTA is an in-house tool and is clearly ahead of other tools in this regard.
In the counterpart, unfortunately, the development environment for script customization is not quite as convenient to use as it is, for example, with drag & drop in TTA.
Conclusion
In summary, CBTA is the right tool to quickly create simple automated test cases based on activity recordings that can be used without much customization. However, if you want to extend your test case with conditions, checks and other bells and whistles, you should rather use one of the other automation tools.
