Oracle Test Automation: Your 2024 Guide

If you are using Oracle, it is likely ingrained in your business. Most use Oracle for its finance module while relying on integrations for other systems like SAP and Salesforce to fill additional needs. Businesses rely so heavily on Oracle (and interconnecting systems) that if something stops working, the consequences can cost millions.

Businesses employ Oracle test automation to prevent the chaos that broken software presents. On paper, it is purported to speed up the time-consuming and burdenful process of manual testing, but in reality, it can create more maintenance work and issues than test automation solves. 

So, how can you avoid Oracle test automation creating more problems than it solves? Our dedicated guide details this and more. 

What you will find in this guide:

1. What is Oracle test automation?
2. Why automating testing in Oracle is important
3. Examples of Oracle test automation
4. How to perform Oracle test automation
5. The challenges of testing Oracle
6. Best practices for Oracle test automation
7. What to look for in an Oracle test automation tool
8. How can Leapwork help you automate testing in Oracle?

What is Oracle test automation?

As the name suggests, Oracle test automation refers to using tools (code-based or visual) to test Oracle automatically. Businesses use solutions like Leapwork to test applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, and the notoriously difficult-to-automate Oracle Forms.

Ideally, automation should help to reduce manual testing and increase test coverage. It ensures that your Oracle applications and those it integrates with function correctly after updates and changes.

Why automating testing in Oracle is important

Oracle releases updates four times a year which amounts to a lot of testing. If you are tasked with repeatedly running tests manually, the chance of making an error is high. This is not a sign of poor job performance; humans are just quite bad at sustaining attention. Test automation is supposed to solve this problem. 

On a more detailed level, Oracle automated testing is critical for the following reasons: 

• Competitive edge: To keep up with market demands, businesses have to be able to change and update process flows to reflect improved business strategy. The more changes there are, the higher the risk of breakage.
• Customizations: Oracle is customizable to match the business’s needs and requirements. The more customization, the more likely a bug will occur when updates take place.
• Integrations: Oracle rarely stands alone in a business’s ecosystem, meaning integrations are typically between Oracle and other applications. This increases the complexity of the testing requirements, meaning a testing solution should work across your applications, not just Oracle. 
• Data integrity: While the pool of transactional data across systems grows, so does the need to test and ensure that data is flowing and stored as intended.

By automating tests, enterprises are given the ability to test what they need to within a short time frame and the confidence that their most critical processes work. If something breaks, the appropriate people are notified so that they can fix the issue before it affects the end user or has financial consequences.

Examples of Oracle test automation

There are many ways to use test automation. Below, we have listed a few ideas to give you an impression of its capabilities. 

• If you are using Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), how can test automation help? You can create automated test scripts that simulate user interactions with the application. For instance, you can automate the process of logging in, navigating to the financial reports section, generating a report, and verifying its contents. 
• What about beyond EBS? You can also automate end-to-end processes, such as purchase-to-pay to ensure functionality without manual intervention (only if your test automation solution supports end-to-ending testing (E2E). Note: not all solutions support this). 
• External factors can also affect testing your Oracle database with automation. For example, many businesses were faced with separating their European and British businesses in their database because of Brexit. If custom regulations needed to be added to the system for the divided groups, like additional paperwork for items sent to the UK, you could test that the data has been accurately separated. To do that efficiently, businesses introduce automation.

Oracle test case examples for automation

You can find additional examples of test cases for automation in Oracle in the table below.

These examples just scratch the surface. Test automation comes in many forms and has countless capabilities (if you have the right tool). For a step-by-step on how it is performed, read the next section.

How to perform Oracle test automation

If you are unfamiliar with test automation and trying to familiarize yourself with the steps involved, there are a few fundamentals to learn.

• Select the right automation tool: Choose a tool that supports Oracle applications, such as Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS), Selenium, or Leapwork. Ensure the tool can handle your Oracle application's specific requirements.
• Define test cases: Identify the key functionalities and processes that need to be tested. Create detailed test cases that outline the steps, inputs, and expected outcomes.
• Develop automated test scripts: Develop scripts that replicate the steps defined in your test cases using the chosen automation tool. Ensure these scripts can handle dynamic elements and changes in the application.
• Execute and monitor tests: Run the automated tests and monitor their execution. Use the tool's reporting features to track test results and identify any issues or failures.
• Maintain and update scripts: Regularly update your test scripts to reflect changes in the application. This ensures your automated tests remain effective and relevant.

Within these five steps, there are nuances. Scripting (as in coding tests, as opposed to using a no-code solution), for example, brings considerable challenges. The next section details a list of the challenges you should know before selecting tooling.

The challenges of testing Oracle

As we have established, Oracle is no small system. It comprises many modules that work together to track anything - from your company’s financial condition to the stock available in a warehouse.

Because of the size of the system and the departments it spans across, testing can be quite complicated. 

Manual testing burdens

Manual testing in Oracle takes a lot of time to complete, and it is burdensome. Every UI change, whether big or small, has to be regression tested. It also takes an additional effort to document the results of those tests in one central place.

Legacy restraints

Some organizations have been using Oracle for over 30 years, meaning that it is ingrained in many of their processes and operates on old versions of Java and browser versions of Internet Explorer. For some, the solution is to build an automation testing framework, which opens a can of worms in its own right.

Automation framework and developer constraints

Frameworks require expensive developer resources to build. If the person who built the framework leaves, your Oracle system is at risk. Once the developer leaves, they take their legacy knowledge of how the framework operates with them. 

If tests break, finding an employee with suitable skills to fix the test within the existing framework is hard. Additionally, you may encounter custom applications built on languages other than Java, requiring further framework development.

Competitive disadvantages from maintenance

Frameworks put you in a disadvantageous competitive position. The organization becomes slower at adapting to changing market conditions. This is because frameworks have a very large maintenance burden and must be modified whenever an update or change is made to the software it is testing. 

Once you make the modification, the framework could break and become flaky. This slows down your ability to react and thus slows down the release of an upgrade or customization.

Code-based testing issues

Much like automation frameworks, packaged programming-based automation requires testers to code. If testers are business users, this may prevent a valuable group of system experts from building automation and participating in testing Oracle. In addition, it requires heavy maintenance, which slows down your ability to release quickly.

Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS), an Oracle-owned testing tool, is a code-based solution. It’s great at automating tests in EBS but does not support tests beyond this module.

What can you do to avoid the headaches of testing Oracle? The next section explains the best practices for Oracle automated testing.

Learn more: Find an OATS alternatives that will increase your productivity and shorten your release cycles.

Best practices for Oracle test automation

Testing is not all doom and gloom. Creating a testing environment that makes you and your team's lives easier is possible. Here are a few tips to help you on your journey toward more effective and efficient testing.

1. Start small: Begin by automating the most critical and frequently used functionalities. Gradually expand your automation efforts as you gain experience and confidence.

2. Ensure reusability: Make your test scripts reusable across different test scenarios. This reduces the effort required to create new scripts from scratch.

3. Keep it modular: Break down your test scripts into smaller, modular components. This makes maintenance easier and allows you to reuse components in different test cases.

4. Integrate with CI/CD: Integrate your test automation with Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This enables automated testing as part of your software development lifecycle, ensuring quicker feedback and faster releases.

5. Monitor and report: Use your automation tool's reporting features to monitor test execution and generate detailed reports (if your tool has one). This helps identify trends, track progress, and make informed decisions.

We know how painful manual testing can be. Spending hundreds of manual hours repeatedly testing the same cases is not feasible. See how this multi-national bank changed its testing strategy and saved 150 hours on every release by automating its regression testing without a code-based solution.

What to look for in an Oracle test automation tool

Navigating the pool of Oracle automation tools can be a difficult task - there are many options, each with their own pros and cons. 

For most enterprises, Oracle is a part of a larger ecosystem of technologies and platforms that, together, make up the business’ core processes. This has implications for the automation tool; it must be robust and reliable, it must be capable of integrating multiple technologies, and it shouldn’t add additional complexity to an already complex web of systems.

This adds up to a number of features that your Oracle automation tool should have. These include:

• Complete Oracle coverage. Oracle consists of multiple applications, spanning from legacy systems and desktop to newly developed Cloud-based applications. The tool should work across all these systems. This is the primary reason why Selenium, the popular open-source web automation tool, isn’t a good candidate for Oracle automation.
• Cross-technology functionality, allowing businesses to test across all integrations. If not, you may have to use several partial automation solutions under one roof, which only adds additional complexity to your ecosystem. 
• Intuitive and visual language rather than code, making automation design and maintenance easy.
• Robust GUI controls recognition and Oracle Forms automation capabilities, solving common maintenance burdens and technical challenges

In the following, we’ll have a closer look at each of these features, and shed some light on why these are important for your future Oracle automation platform.

How can Leapwork help you automate testing in Oracle?

Leapwork is a visual (codeless) test automation tool for faster build, maintenance and scalability. 

For businesses transitioning from manual to automated testing, codeless automation allows for quick adoption of the tool. There is no need to learn how to program automation in Java, it is all visual.

For a business transitioning from a framework/code-based automation to codeless automation, the maintenance workload becomes a fraction of what it once was. No need to continuously change strategies, or continuously fix broken code every time dynamic content changes.

• Easier automation in Oracle. Whatever module you use in Oracle, whether on a legacy system, web, or desktop, Leapwork will automate it. It is possible to interact with dynamic content, forms, responsive layouts, and more.
• Automate across systems. Leapwork’s intuitive, visual approach to automation means your organization can run automation across all Oracle-based applications, and your entire digital landscape, without having to code.
• Rapid automation. Leapwork’s hyper-intuitive user interface hides all the complicated elements under the hood. This means Oracle automation can be built and maintained at speed.
• Short learning curve. As well as being easy to use, Leapwork comes with world-class support so your organization can experience the benefits of automation immediately.

If you want to learn more about automating Oracle testing, make sure to get our extended guide and checklist: