In 2019 SAP released SAP PIT, a tool that comes with your SAP PI/PO system and enables users to test your SAP PI interfaces.
Figaf DevOps Suite and SAP PIT work basically in the same way. You can select data from your productive system and then run the test on your development or test system. You can then compare the output with the data from your production systems. It is possible to set up exceptions for what is important.
SAP PIT is by far the most used tool for testing SAP PI interfaces because it is free and already installed on your system. I normally recommend minimum SP 16 because that is where it gets features to make it more useful. Before that, you get some limitations that make it difficult to use.
The Figaf DevOps Suite is something you will have to buy. So what are the reasons that you should spend money on buying a new tool to handle your testing? I do believe that the Figaf tool will save you money compared to spending time on consultants to test.
Number of features
The Figaf tool has a lot more features to make it easier for you to run your test cases. Our design goal has been to make it easier and be able to test the more complicated tests that need to be supported out of the box. We support a number of ways to record tests, and support different patterns like Sync-Async, Async-Sync and EDISeparator. Most of the functions work without you having to configure anything.
Feature improvements
We are able to deliver new improvements fast to make sure that your test can run for specific cases. Sometimes we do this as a part of the standard support and improvement process. Other times we create the improvement for a fee, as long as this will benefit other clients also. It depends on the requirement and the difficulty, and general usage.
Sometimes it is those small features that make it possible to run your test cases or you have to resort to manual testing.
SAP PIT is releasing some new features with each support pack. I don’t know the roadmap and how to influence it.
Testing of confidential data
The idea of getting data from your production systems is really good because it gives you all the different variations in your system. It does though give developers/testers access to all the data they should not be able to view according to GDPR or SOX, or what data privacy rules you follow.
When this was written, SAP PIT did not have any measures to block confidential data, and there is a general warning of using it with productive data. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
In Figaf you have two options to keep data private. One is to mark all data from productive systems as sensitive. Then in the Figaf tool, you can only see data with a mask so Daniel is converted to Xxxxxx. And you can only see there is a problem with the name not what the name is. There are also other preventive measures built in to block users from viewing the test data.
There is also an option to take the input messages and convert part of them with obfuscated data to make test cases that simplify your processing.
The goal has been to make it simple to handle the processing without giving unauthorized access to confidential information. You should of course perform your own assessment of our security to see if it follows your requirements. If you find any issues we will work on fixing them.
Handle EDI comparison
The Figaf tool has been built to handle EDI comparison. It means that the tool is able to compare and ignore elements of the X12 and EDIFACT standards. This enables you to check the mappings and the EDI conversion works the same after an upgrade. We do see a number of clients working with the B2B Add-on tool to customize the output messages. This is what we are able to support.
Maintain the test cases
Once you develop your SAP Integration you will from time to time change mapping, which will then mean that you get expected deviations. You will then need to create a new test case to account for this update. With the Figaf tool, you just select the test case and select the update button to use the current output as the new expected result. You, therefore, do not need to create new test cases from scratch.
With PIT you don’t have an option, you will need to delete the current test case and once you run your test you can record new messages.
Test the impacted interfaces
With the Figaf DevOps Suite, you have the option to test all the interfaces that have been impacted by a change. The tool can see which interfaces have been updated. Then run test cases on them. It means that you don’t need to run all your test cases but only the ones where you see there is a change.
Integrated transport tool
A large part of the time spent on processing SAP PI/PO development is to document, govern, and handle the transports. The Figaf DevOps Suite has that part also. You therefore can save time on your development efforts making it faster to deliver your integration.
Test SAP CPI the same way
Figaf is able to test SAP CPI in the same simple way. You don’t need to create any special objects or objects to test. All required objects will be handled by the Figaf tool. That way your testing will be much simpler.
We have also built in test case migration, so you can take your SAP PI/PO test cases and run them on SAP CPI.
Try Figaf
If you are doing a PoC with the SAP PIT tool, I would recommend also trying out the Figaf tool. Then you can see which one performs better for your use case.
The Figaf tool is pretty simple to get started with. You just download a jar file and run it. It will take you 5 minutes to get started. You can use your laptop and your normal SAP PI developer user.
You can start a free trial of the Figaf DevOps Suite.
