PIT Tool - Made it easy!

[sawantsup]

Recently, we upgraded our SAP PO 7.5 system from SP5 to SP16 and with that, we embarked on a new journey of test automation with PIT tool. This blog post is to illustrate the use cases of PIT tool in day-to-day testing along with the steps necessary to achieve them.

For an overview and basic understanding of PIT tool architecture and functionality, please read below blog posts:

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/08/process-integration-test-tool-shipped-with-sap-process-orchestratio...

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/08/sap-process-integration-test-tool-pit-first-steps/

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/12/sap-process-integration-test-tool-pit-create-and-execute-a-test-cas...

 

Use cases:

We have a 3-tier landscape for SAP PO, namely Dev, Test and Prod. The changes to the existing interfaces and moving them to the production system after a series of testing on each environment is not an uncommon scenario. However, in most cases, the challenging part to test such changes is to find the correct data in a timely manner. This is where the PIT tool has a significant role to play.

With PIT tool around, below use cases can be easily realized:

1. Dev to Dev testing for the asynchronous interface using PIT tool:

This is a very common scenario wherein the changes done on Dev system needs to be tested using old data and the result of testing needs to be compared against the old data

2. Prod to Test testing for the asynchronous interface using PIT tool:

Here, the data is extracted from the Production system and used for testing on the Test system and the result of testing is compared with production data

Now let us take a deeper look at each of these use cases and see all configurations steps required in each case.

Please note that I have not gone into the details of how to do a particular technical configuration; those details are very well explained in the blog posts mentioned above. I have only outlined the steps necessary to achieve the testing through PIT tool in each of the use cases.

1. Dev to Dev testing for the asynchronous interface using PIT tool:

• Determine source and target systems and PIT tool

Source System: Dev

Target System: Dev

PIT Tool: Located on Dev system

• Complete the prerequisites

Source system (Dev): Ensure to have logging enabled at three stages (BI, MS, AM) for the                 message to be extracted

Target system (Dev):  Carry out the CTC PI Test Tool Target

       

           PIT Tool (on Dev system):

a. Carry out the CTC PI Test Tool



b. Create HTTP destination connecting to Dev system in NWA; this destination would be                        used to connect to both source and target systems as source & target systems are                              same (Dev) in this case

          

• Login to NWDS and open SAP Process Integration Test perspective; login to PIT tool using Dev system credentials


• Add a test system: Here both source and target systems is our Dev system and hence, creating only one test system for Dev system is enough


• Create a Test case and add Test data by extracting the data from Dev system:

• Execute the Test case using “Run configuration” and the log for the same can be viewed on the screen:

• Launch verification by right-clicking on the above executed run; the verification shows the differences in the payloads of the older message and the newly generated message:

 

2. Prod to Test testing for the asynchronous interface using PIT tool:

• Determine source and target systems and PIT tool

Source System: Prod

Target System: Test

PIT Tool: Located on the Test system

• Complete the prerequisites

Source system (Prod): Ensure to have logging enabled at three stages (BI, MS, AM) for the                message to be extracted from Prod system

Target system (Test):  Carry out the CTC PI Test Tool Target on the Test system

PIT Tool (on Test system):

a. Carry out the CTC PI Test Tool on the Test system

b. Create HTTP destinations connecting to Prod and Test systems in NWA of Test system

• Login to NWDS and open SAP Process Integration Test perspective; login to PIT tool using Testsystem credentials

• Add test systems:

a.  Add test system for the source (Prod)

b.  Add test system for the target (Test)

• Create a Test case and add Test data by extracting the data from Prod system:

 

 

• Execute the Test case using “Run configuration” and the log for the same can be viewed on the screen


• Launch verification by right-clicking on the job log executed in the above step; the verification shows the differences in the payloads of Prod message and the Test message

Few points to be highlighted:

1. To test synchronous messages, the user must have the role assigned with action retrieve_response; such a role already exists in the system:

2. The messages tested through PIT tool can be easily distinguished through logs in message monitoring:

3. Since the PIT tool architecture is based on the client-server framework, wherein NWDS acts as the client; the test cases and test systems are shared across all the users having NWDS installed locally in the project team

 

Pros of using PIT tool:

1. Saves the efforts of testing as the data can be stored and replayed on another system for testing


2. Data can be extracted from any SAP PO environment; so any SAP PO system (Dev, Test, Prod) can act as the source of data. Similarly, any SAP PO system can act as the target for testing where messages are replayed for testing


3. Test results can be easily compared via the tool

 

Cons of using PIT tool:

1. The interface should have run at least once in order to extract the payload on the source system


2. The payload of the interfaces should be logged at stages BI, MS and AM in order to extract the data by the PIT tool; this would lead to unnecessary logging of all messages of an interface even when not necessary and this also means, the older data for which the logging was not enabled cannot be extracted by PIT tool

 

Limitations of using PIT tool:

You can refer to SAP help link for limitations:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/c3494a3adf6d43fb946cd8ce945ed123/7.5.14/en-US/5ee56128f844469c970cdc8f78...

Besides, there are below limitations on the usage of PIT tool:

1. Testing of BPM scenarios is not supported


2. Only successfully processed messages can be extracted; so the data for failed messages can’t be replayed through PIT tool


3. The interfaces which have run in the past without logging enabled, the payload for such interfaces can’t be extracted

As a conclusion, I would say that with PIT tool as many use cases are possible as the combinations of source and target systems. The simplicity of the tool both in configuration and in its use against the time saved during testing is the unique selling point of the tool. Although the tool has some limitations at the moment, the future roadmap looks very promising. So sooner this tool becomes the part of our daily testing life, the faster we get close to the automated world 🙂