The intention of
business process testing (BPT) in
Silk Central is helping customers addressing the challenges of validating end-to-end business transactions. BPT is an extension to the
existing manual testing capabilities of
Silk Central, introducing new BPT-focused asset types to reduce complexity and to drive BPT-specific functionality.
Such end-to-end business transactions are a collection of related structured activities that can be conducted by one or more
persons to achieve a particular business goal. These activities can either be related to a specific business unit or span
across several business units. If they span across multiple business units, collaboration between these units is required
to accomplish the business transaction. The activities that are involved in a business transaction can be an encapsulated
part of other business transactions. Any individual activity can also contain another entire business transaction.
When mapping this approach into the testing space, one can imagine that the activities of former single tests can be connected
in series to each other, where the results of one test might influence the execution of the subsequent test. Additionally,
each test in this sequence can be executed by a different tester representing a business unit, therefore collaboration and
hand-off mechanisms are required.
BPT is an extension to the existing manual testing capabilities of
Silk Central, introducing new BPT-focused asset types to reduce complexity and to drive BPT-specific functionality.
The following new asset types are introduced for BPT in
Silk Central:
-
A
business component represents a basic component of an end-to-end business transaction and consists of the activities that can be conducted by
a specific business unit. All tests in a business component can be performed by the same tester. A business component has
the following characteristics:
- It consists of manual test steps and shared steps.
- It cannot contain other business components.
- It cannot contain flows.
- It cannot be assigned to a manual test or to a shared steps object.
- A business component is executed by a member of a group of testers. The group needs to be assigned to the business component.
- It can be maintained in the
Libraries unit, which is accessible from the
Silk Central menu under
-
A
flow represents a reusable sequence of activities that are included in multiple end-to end business transactions. A Flow can ideally
be reused in multiple business process tests. A flow has the following characteristics:
- It is a collection of business components in a defined sequence.
- It cannot contain other flows.
- It cannot contain manual steps or shared steps.
- It cannot be assigned to a manual test or to a shared steps object.
- It can be maintained in the
Libraries unit, which is accessible from the
Silk Central menu under
-
A
business process test represents an end-to end business transaction. A business process test has the following characteristics:
- It is a collection of business components and flows in a defined sequence.
- Each component is executed separately.
- It can be maintained in the
Tests unit.