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PDF Automation Tool. PDF Automation Tool – The Need. Background:
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PDF Automation Tool – The Need • Background: • A large Insurance company in US has engaged Cognizant QA team for testing different releases. The Cognizant team validates different enhancements in a particular release, and in the process, carries out testing of all the impacted applications. • The Challenge: • For retrieving data from PDF documents, one needs a third party tool and hence extra investment by Customer Organization. This tool overcomes this challenge through a workaround in QTP. • How it works: • The automation framework is developed using HP’s functional testing tool, Quick Test Professional v 9.0 and used the “Mercury Clipboard” class for the verification. The major Challenges faced while designing the framework were: • Compatibility issue of QTP 9.0 with PDF documents restricts the record & playback operation on PDF. • Object Identification issues due to the dynamic behavior of the objects. • Data from a PDF document looses the order and alignment while copying the same in a .txt file. • Data location in a table of the PDF document varies depending on the business logic of the requirement. • All the above challenges were taken care in the Framework by using clipboard concept, Layered architecture for working simultaneously with mainframe and PDF and Message templates.
PDF Automation Tool – How it helps • What it can do: • Download all PDFs related to a particular transaction to a local drive (this saves considerable execution time especially if one is on VPN, as PDFs are not required to be open on Internet) • Extract data from Mainframe screen for a particular transaction • Compare the extracted data with PDF data • Generate the comparison report • It raised our competitive advantage by: • Verification of PDF contents which includes tables, messages, header, footer and boxes. • Use of intermediate clipboard concept to reduce the time taken during data verification process. • Controlling the data verification mechanism from excel based library containing message and block templates. • Effective reporting mechanism by providing detail description in case of success or failure. • Work simultaneously with two different types of applications e.g. Mainframe and PDF.
PDF Automation Tool – Benefits • Benefits to Client: • Reduced cycle time for testing (1 day for 1 PDF to > 100 PDFs / day). • Reduction in Manual testing effort by 15 times, leading to significant cost savings. • Reduced automation effort because of effective reusability of scripts. • Automation Script extended to Business users for day-today checking. • The automation suite developed could indicate even trivial GUI errors – e.g., comma, end of line missing etc. • Dollar Savings of > $14 K
PDF Automation Tool – Key Features • Verification of PDF contents which includes tables, messages, header, footer and boxes. • Use of intermediate clipboard concept to reduce the time taken during data verification process. • Controlling the data verification mechanism from outside excel. • Effective reporting mechanism by providing detail description in case of success or failure. • Work simultaneously with two different types of applications e.g. Mainframe and PDF.
Challenges faced during Pilot • Compatibility issue of QTP 9.0 with PDF documents restricts the record and playback operation on PDF. • Object Identification issues due to the dynamic behavior of the objects. • Data from a PDF document looses the order and alignment while copying the same in a .txt file. • Data location in a table of the PDF document varies depending on the business logic of the requirement. • Different automation approach for COSMOS (PDF) and Vantage One (mainframe) applications.
Learning's from the Pilot • No direct support was provided by QTP for identifying PDF documents, therefore Mercury’s clipboard object was used to retrieve data from PDF and do the comparison. • Objects were quite dynamic in nature, therefore regular expressions were used wherever applicable for the dynamic property values. • Messages/blocks were to be verified in PDF, thus message templates were used to construct the messages by taking values at runtime from Vantage One application. • There was a need to work simultaneously with two applications, hence layered architecture was used to facilitate working with Vantage and PDF simultaneously.
Further enhancement plans • New Riders • New Product launches • Product Exchanges • Online Statements verification from JH Annuities.com • Confirms • Verification of Fund Merger and Addition impacts
Recommendation for institutionalization • Potential Areas of Reuse • Areas involving verification of PDF contents which includes statements, messages, header, footer, tables and blocks. • Limitations and Potential Barriers • The automation framework developed cannot be used to compare two PDF documents and list out the differences. • The comparison might give incorrect results in case the extracted data exceeds the size of clipboard. • Changes required • The SDK available from Adobe can be used to read PDFs and do the comparison.
Attachments (mandatory for home-grown tools) • Source Code • Due to size constraints (3.15 GB), Source Code will be provided on request • Code Template • User Manual