Tag Archive for: testing

Friday the 8 of March was the day that SAP finally released SP 14 of SAP PI/PO 7.5. The big promise was the new testing solution that allowed users to test SAP PI message process. It is called PIT.

“TL;DR the testing solution from SAP has some good features for testing. If you are serious with your testing and want full coverage then try out the Figaf IRT tool. “

As a vendor with a similar product, I have been interested in knowing what was going on with it and how it was working. I had seen some initial working of it but did not know where it would end. If it was going to be a killer product then it would remove part of my market. No customers can see the solution and judge if it will be useful for their use cases.

The key takes away is that testing is an important part of your it process where it is upgrading/patching, development or change of your interfaces. It is something that customer have expected and would like to see improved.

It is also good to know that SAP is taking the same approach as we have for fetching and running test cases.

Let’s start with the good part.

The Good part of PIT

• It is a part of your license so you do not have to pay separately for it.
• It removes the excuse that you cannot run any tests because you can always set it up
• It supports fetching test data from dual-stack systems so you can test when you are performing upgrades for the systems. You will need to apply some ABAP notes to allow the recording.
• You don’t need to install extra systems to run it the testing application.
• It has a shared repository of data that all developers with the right role can access.
• You can configure comparison of attachments
• There are batch jobs running message processing and validation.
• It is standard software following SAP delivery and support method.
• Messages can be stopped before reaching the adapter and thereby not send it to the receiver.
• That no changes need to be made to your landscape except you need to switch logging on for a period of time for the interfaces you want to collect data from.
• It gives a good overview over how many messages that are affected by a change in one element

I have not seen any roadmaps of the tool and how much resources and new features will be delivered but it looks like there will be more effort in it. So this is all based on the initial release.

Check out the video that I recorded that show my first look at what the tool can do.

I believe that PIT will probably run more tests that my tool because the availability of the tool and customers it is simple to install the system.

What are the requirements

The test system must be installed on a 7.5 sp 14 or above. It can only run a test on the system with that SP level.

PIT  is able to collect test data from AEX system 7.31+ that have been updated within the last 2 years (It requires this note 2650265, which seems to have been backported to all service packs on 7.31+).

PIT can also collect messages from ABAP based systems here you need to apply some more support packages to allow the system to read data.

Read more on

• How to install it and configure the tool
• How to create test cases

I still see some areas where we have advantages over the SAP tool. (Okay, I may be a little biased, but if you try it out you will hopefully too.)

Why you still need to buy my tool

• It enables you to test your modules that way you are ensuring that it is also covered as a part of the test.
• We have a number of options for testing including using the SAP logging, but unlike SAP we du support all 7.31+ releases because we have web scraping to get messages. It is not an ideal solution but allows you to create test data on your old system without having to patch them. Because then you will have to do testing.
• The speed of recording multiple test cases is a lot faster with the IRT tool because it can handle a lot of configuration needed. You can select multiple iflows and record them at the same time.
• We do have a graphical overview to view differences and add ignoring of certain elements like time stamps that you do not want to cover.
• Figaf support patterns not covered by PIT like Async-sync, Sync-async, EDISeperator and pattern is determinated automatically
• Comparison not only in XML but also JSON, X12, EDIFACT, Text, and Binary
• Simple data anonymization. You can select your input payload and then with a few clicks analyze everything and insert random names or number on different locations. This allows you to test with sensitive data and comply with GDPR.
• Allow you to run multiple jobs and test cases when you want or scheduled
• Excel report of all results so you can show how it worked
• Connection with our DevOps solution so you can ensure that you are testing all interfaces that are affected by your change. It also allows you to document what was changed.
• For customers the ability to get new features or functions delivered in days.
• And so on… I could probably find a few more areas that we cover better.

Will we integrate the Figaf IRT tool with PIT

Since SAP will have a lot of test cases running in the tool we may be able to add some additional benefits of running tests with it. There may be something that can be implemented. We can leverage the way SAP is processing messages if you don’t want to get the test messages into the adapter. We could also use the ability to send a message directly to the message processing without creating an XI30 message.

We cloud probably also leverage the SAP part about downloading messages from dual-stack systems, and use them in our landscape.

IT will probably depend on when customers are adopting 7.5 sp14.

Your take away

If you have a plan to apply 7.5 sp 14 in the near future to your landscape do evaluate it. And see how it fits your plan and idea for working with the tools.

If you want to tool that can help you set up test cases faster, give you full tracking of what is being developed then try out the Figaf IRT tool? And we do support CPI also in the same approach.

You can check out the tool and see if it will suit your testing capabilities better. Check it out at Figaf.com/IRT