If you’re at all involved with Oracle Cloud testing, then you likely know how maddening regression testing can be. In this blog, we’ll explain why regression testing–though traditionally boring and repetitive–is vital to business continuity, we’ll explain the main challenges associated with Oracle Cloud regression testing, and we’ll explain how to address these challenges with Opkey’s test automation solution.

What is regression testing?
Regression testing is the process of going back to check that existing code or previous updates have not been impacted negatively by new updates or features. In other words, regression testing ensures that existing functionality continues to work after changes are made, updates have been pushed, or when bugs have been fixed.

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Why is regression testing of Oracle Cloud Applications needed?
Simply put, enterprises must regression test their Oracle Cloud applications with each quarterly release. Specifically, regression testing ensures that:

The customizations of Oracle Cloud Applications still remain intact
Integrations within Oracle Cloud Applications still work as intended
No major process fails
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And whenever Oracle pushes any ad-hoc releases, configuration changes, patching, or other modifications to code, organizations need to execute regression testing to ensure existing business processes aren’t disrupted.

Since new changes, such as adding a new feature, have the potential to negatively impact system performance or user experience, enterprises should perform regression testing of all their critical business processes with each major change, including customized reports, key workflow approvals, and critical integrations with other applications. If you implement a new feature without considering its impact on current processes and procedures, it could have major negative implications for operational efficiency.

Regression testing should be performed whenever:

A process is adjusted or a new process is implemented. Running regression test cases is necessary to keep business disruptions at a minimum.
Oracle rolls out updates. Oracle Cloud quarterly updates have the potential to impact your existing customizations and integrations. Regression testing ensures that your existing customizations and integrations work as expected.
You integrate a new app to your Oracle environment. Whenever a new integration is made, you need to perform regression testing to ensure existing integrations don’t fail.
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Challenges in Oracle Cloud Regression Testing
Multiple regression testing cycles

Oracle Cloud quarterly updates deliver new features and functionalities 4X a year to help enterprises stay nimble and competitive. Each quarterly update requires at least 2X of regression testing - one in the test environment and one in the production environment. Therefore, organizations must regression test their Oracle applications 8 times a year, at a minimum. Doing this manually can be a daunting task.

Short testing windows

Non-production environments receive the updates first. After two weeks, updates are implemented in production. This cannot be rescheduled or canceled. Two weeks is a very short duration to complete regression testing, analyze the results, and raise issues with Oracle.

Not knowing what to test

Regression test selection and test case prioritization is challenging for nearly all Oracle customers. With traditional manual testing, organizations have to guess what to test, and as a result, end up testing too much–wasting time and money–or testing too little, which exposes them to risk. Honing in on the optimal regression test suites is very difficult without intelligent test automation platforms.

Why Traditional Test Automation Isn’t Ideal for Oracle Cloud Regression Testing

Test automation is the logical way to address Oracle Cloud regression testing challenges. But while an automated regression testing tool speeds up the regression test executions, code-based tools like Selenium aren’t ideal for Oracle regression testing. Here’s why:

Code-based tools require technically trained employees

Code-based test automation tools have a steep learning curve, and employees typically need years of training before being able to use them. This is problematic because employees who typically use Oracle Cloud applications aren’t technical, and therefore can’t contribute to Oracle testing when these tools are used.

Test script maintenance is a major burden

It is difficult to automate Oracle Cloud apps because they don’t have fixed attributes like name, CSS, ID, etc. Test automation tools that leverage locators aren’t useful since a small change or modification in the code make test scripts flaky or brittle. With Oracle rolling out updates 4X a year, test script maintenance becomes quite burdensome.

‍End-to-end testing is nearly impossible

Oracle Cloud apps rarely operate as standalone apps. In most cases, they’re integrated with other applications like Workday, Salesforce, or other custom apps. It’s nearly impossible to create true end-to-end tests with a code-based tool like Selenium.

Why Opkey is The Optimal Solution for Oracle Cloud Regression Testing
Opkey is the industry’s leading regression testing platform for Oracle Cloud apps. By leveraging no-code test automation, change impact analysis, and AI-powered self-healing capabilities, Opkey shortens testing cycles, alleviates maintenance burden, and minimizes business risks. Here’s how:

Zero code test builder: Our no-code test automation platform lets any employee create automated test cases without knowing how to code. Using Opkey’s drag-and-drop and screen recording interfaces, users can intuitively create and automate test cases around the processes they know best.

Intelligent test recommendations: Opkey provides an impact analysis report with each quarterly release, which helps organizations identify their most at-risk objects, and further recommends the right number of regression tests to run. This ensures that users don’t waste time testing too much, or expose their data to risks by testing too little. Tests are recommended based on the most likely impacted business processes and other tests that frequently fail with similar changes.

Self-healing test scripts: Opkey automatically identifies changes in object properties and alerts relevant users, enabling them to fix broken tests easily. Opkey’s AI-powered self-healing scripts reduce testing efforts by 70%, bringing you closer to sustainable test automation.

End-to-end testing: With support for over 14 packaged applications and 150 technologies, Opkey empowers organizations to test complex cross-application business processes with confidence. Opkey alerts you whenever middleware, integrated packaged apps, or other third-party applications are at risk, making sure a business process change in one area doesn't disrupt the workflow later on.