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| SAP Testing Lessons Learned
(Submitted by: Jose Farjardo, Company: ) |
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9. Problems obtaining valid test data
Arguably, the most prevalent risk to conducting an SAP test whether it is integration, functional, string, volume, smoke, or security test is obtaining valid SAP test data.
When dealing with SAP data invariable one or more of the questions below will arise before a testing cycle ensues:
Where will the test data come from? How will one produce new data for transactions that require unique data? How will the data be loaded into a new SAP client and instance? What happens when an interface or conversion needs to send data into core SAP R/3 from a legacy system and the interface or conversion is not executing properly or has yet to be developed? What happens when the transactional data has not been created?
Assuming that the testing team has a dedicated test bed or QA box the test manager will need to ensure that all the necessary data (master, transactional, test, etc) is properly loaded as part of the assessment for the test readiness review. Ideally an SAP test will be conducted within a test bed containing data that closely mirrors production data and where the testing environment is production-sized. The test manager should prioritize the test cases that will be executed and determine and document any work-around for test cases that cannot be executed due to missing test data. |