Who would deny it – the wonderful life of the average SAP user? Everything works, everything is fun, everything goes quickly. However, it is not always easy to find the appropriate motivation for the (especially recurring) activities – at least SAP has invented something for the repetitive monotony: CATT.
If I had known that earlier…
Every Basis administrator knows them – the moments when, due to infrastructural 3-year plans, 750 printers have to be deleted again and created under a new name. Very popular are also company mergers, where very often long Excel lists are created, containing the 1200 new employees for the central ERP system. However, at the latest after the 74th user, the first carelessness errors creep in – and, almost worse, because so unfamiliar – DEMOTIVATION. Now good advice is expensive – doesn’t that also somehow work automatically?
Sure it can, and every resourceful SAP user has his or her favorite method. Mine is the CATT method.
What is it about?
Actually, it’s about mass testing. Once the developer has completed the unit tests and the first test runs in the overall process have been successful, then it’s time for mass testing. How well does the system handle mass inserts and updates? How do the evaluations handle really large tables?
CATT helps to repeat the same activities over and over again (with changed parameters if desired). And the best : without any demotivation. The use of CATT is not entirely self-explanatory, so here is some explanatory information.
Procedure
We want to create users automatically from an Excel list using SU01. For the first test we recommend a small number of e.g. 10 users, which can be removed quickly if necessary. The steps in detail:
- Creating the test case (this is our execution template)
We are in the transaction SCEM, and create a new test case (recommendation for practicing : Z_, local object without package, component „BC“).
Directly after that, the transaction to be recorded is queried, in our case that would be SU01. Now please create a new user once completely. Confirm all warnings, windows and messages accordingly.
The system records in which window which entries were made. Some of them are those that need to be repeated en masse (such as the Ok codes from the register change, save, etc.). Others we will replace with our mass data (such as user name, phone number).
After the end of the activities, press „Back“ once, and the recording ends. We can then save this test case (Environment CATT Extended, type CATT), and go back to the standard view of SCEM.
- Define import parameters (here we define the variable values)
The difference between the fixed input codes for „Create user“, „Change tab“ etc. and the inputs that will later be replaced by mass data is the infamous import parameter. A field with this property can later be overwritten in the mass run by changing contents on each pass.
This can be done in SCAT, where we discover the recorded transaction list in the change mode of our test case (here only one, our SU01). Double-clicking on it takes us to the all input parameters page, where we define the „dynamic“ fields as import parameters (on all screens). Clicking on „Back“ brings us back to the transaction overview.
- Export and fill variant defaults
Since the import parameters are expected in a certain format, we first export a format template. We then insert the mass data into this template.
This can be done relatively easily via „Goto“ / „Variant“ / „Export template“. The resulting file can be filled from line five with our 10 test users. Important is : for each data set one line, and in text format separate each column with TAB. This works wonderfully with Excel and subsequent TXT export (UTF-8 must be saved for Unicode systems).
- Import mass data
Go to „Goto“ / „Variants“ / „Change“ / „Import as Textfile“ to upload the created mass file. In the upcoming selection dialog please choose (mostly the third) the option that imports all variants and removes existing ones if necessary.
- Execute test case with imported mass data
And now fresh to the action : we execute our test case with import data.
To do this, simply press „Execute“ in the transaction overview, select „Errors“ in the following window for the test run. For the productive mass run select „dark“ later, then it will not stop if 20 of 1500 users could not be created. At the end there is a history log anyway, where warnings and errors should be checked. Selecting „Errors“ for our test makes the system stop on errors, so we can check them individually and correct them manually.
Then select „all variants“ and we’re ready to go.
Last but not least
… it is always recommended to test in different environments with a few scripts. So you get a feeling for the tool and the processes, and stumble sometimes on mistakes that you do not make a second time (eg with 1000 users and processing „Error“ to start ;).
The obligatory
This documentation is a collection of empirical values, and in no form by the product manufacturers (SAP, Oracle, ..) tested or released. No liability can be assumed for damages resulting from (partial or complete) following of this documentation.
Of course I am happy about questions, comments or additions.
