Empowering Productivity through Installation Automation

Transcription

1 Authors: Empowering Productivity through Installation Automation Bhuvaneswari Radhakrishnan Santosh Ayodhya Honeywell Technology Solutions Adarsh Prime Project Pvt. Ltd, Survey No. 19/2 Devarabisanahalli village, KR Puram Hobli, Bangalore East Taluk, Bangalore

2 Abstract Whirling in the world of competition, every organization is beating each other in market by delivering best quality products in lesser time for their own survival. As with the constant steep of the graph for customers expectations on quality, every organization is keenly looking in the ways to optimize their products more quickly and cost effectively. Test automation found its place in this crucial process by reducing the test cycle time and increasing the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of test. Having the myth Test Automation is only for regression tests running in mind, many people fail to find the real benefit of test automation but simply sticking to the one among benefit of it. Aiming to rule this myth out, this document shows light to the installation automation, yet another powerful form of test automation which accelerates the speed of test and increases ROI. What is Installation Automation Installation automation is a category of test automation which automates the installation of applications/software. Automated installations are faster, easier and more consistent than having users or IT professionals install the software manually which can be a slow and potentially error-prone process. It runs with minimal or no user interaction. This provides a faster, more consistent and trouble-free installation. Thus it increases the productivity significantly when it is properly planned and implemented. Why installation automation Installation automation is typically used in a system where there are frequent builds being released or in a system involving multiple machines which need the same software to be installed. The man power required in copying the build installers into the respective machines and carrying over the installations time consuming whereas the installation automation can take over the tasks and finish it over the night without any manual intervention. It contains a configuration file involving the inputs required for installation to be carried out unattendently. Thus it reduces the number of human errors that are being introduced during installation. As well when we do manual installation through an interactive installation wizard, there could be time delay for the users to come and feed the inputs to the installation wizard wherever required. Automating the installation could rule out this time latency by configuring all the required inputs in configuration file. By minimizing the error in installation process we can achieve lower cost(less time) and consistency which directly creates a positive impact on productivity. 2

3 When we need Installation Automation Installation automation can bring us great benefits in two cases. Assume a large system with 50 test machines to be installed with the application. The time spent on installing the same application in 50 machines can remarkably impact over the overall cost of the product. Also since it is a quite enormous and repetitive task to install software in such large system, it is more error prone for a human to accomplish this task. Whereas with one time investment on installation automation can reduce the human errors committed at installation in multiple machines. If the same product is being developed in agile, as many the number of builds, the manual installation efforts and time is directly proportional. Organizations experience a massive saving in choosing installation automation in this case. Larger test bed with a few build releases (as depicted in Fig. 1). Fig. 1 On the other hand, for the systems with frequent builds like in weekly/daily basis the efforts spent on installing the applications for each and every build is quite time consuming and may seem a tiring work. Implementing this approach in such scenarios can benefit us hugely in ROI and also plays a major role in implementing Continuous Integration where builds may be created at every commit along with daily or weekly builds. On those instances, we can have a fully automated system where right from build creation, build deployment, installation, smoke test and regression test will be done automatically when a commit happened or as per the schedule to ensure the quality. Smaller test bed with a few build releases (as depicted in Fig. 2). 3

4 Fig. 2 Automated Installation Testing In addition with aiding in effort saving, installation automation can also take a form to ensure the quality of installation in ways of installation testing. If the installation of the application is successful, it is quite a regular way in customer s expectation. But if the installation itself is not successful, definitely the customer satisfaction could be completely opposite. The first impression to make the loyal customer itself will be ruined due to the not-much-attention-paid-installation-package. In order to mitigate this risk, it is always better to concentrate on testing the installation process/wizard also just like any other testing that is being carried to ensure the quality of the product. And also we can verify a lot other hidden things in this installation automation which usually will be skipped in manual installation. The sample list extends as given below. Sample features possible with installation testing (as depicted in Fig. 3). 4

5 Test un-installation Test installation Test Registry values Test installation breakages Test DB initializations and transactions Test CPU performance Multiplatform testing Multi-lingual testing Installation Automation helps in adding the coverage Sample features Covering un-installation Testing: Fig. 3 When it comes to installation, just like the human mentality usually people will concentrate in installation or upgradation part instead considering the uninstallation also. For a system with frequent builds, with installation automation we can achieve the following scenarios easily. i) Testing the fresh installation of the new build ii) Uninstalling the current build and reinstalling the new build iii) Direct upgradation of new build. Along with these scenarios, we can also include verifying if the file is removed after uninstallation or not. Thus the errors prone out of all possible conditions are found in advance, adding flavor to the confidence on our product. Multiplatform Multilingual installation Testing: 5

6 We can make use of automated installation by testing the installation in multiple platforms and as well against multiple languages. In this case, the automation scripts should be built in a way to work on different platforms and languages to gain the increased coverage. Testing system s reaction on injected failures: We can also kill the installation in between or inject some known failures which may come up as an unexpected failure at field and see how does the system react and behave for such breakages. This way we can make sure the recovery efficiency before investing enormous efforts in maintenance when such a field issue is been reported. Testing system behaviors and performance: Sometimes the software may end up in behaving very slow or mysteriously that the issue could not be sorted out or reproduced in any other machine but being reported from only one machine constantly. In such cases, skipping such strange behaviors thinking as it happens very rarely, in one machine only could cost us much when the machine our customer possess also behaves in the same weird manner. The state the machine was, before the installation or the other software s present in the machine could also be the cause of such issues being observed. Having the software installation tested with such combinations and keeping the systems under observation can help us in serving the customers with zero defect quality, which is almost a dream of every organization. Miscellaneous: Other than the above mentioned verifications, installation automation can also include the bellowed mentioned points to add coverage and render better quality. i) Checking DB initialization ii) Checking files, libraries and their Versions been created after installation iii) Checking registry keys and their versions, etc., How we need to handle Automated Installation pre-requisites Automating the installation is like allowing someone else to do your task provided with the required details/inputs to feed for the process. Thus it requires the authentications and authorizations as needed as for the manual installation. Diving deeply into the pre 6

7 conditions, the below mentioned points play a major role for getting installation automation working. Security Constraints: As with automating the installation process, if we plan to trigger the process in one central machine and installation in different target machines, we have to come across some security constraints like User Access control, windows firewall etc. It is advisable to plan the automation considering these constraints and handling mechanisms in order to ensure a reliable automated installation. User account Administrator privileges: As installing an application in a machine remotely is nearly equivalent to inject any virus in the target machine, unless or until the user account with which you have logged in has administrator privileges, the installation may not work as the way intended in general. Auto Logon: Sometimes in between installation, the system may need to be restarted to finish the installation of pre-requisites. Thus auto-logon option helps us in enabling automatically logging in the system once it is powered on without waiting for the user to feed the credentials, provided the credentials are been already set in the registry. Taking input from the user for automation Automating installation can be treated as installing software unattended also. Thus the required inputs to feed in the installation process should be configured for the system to continue installation without manual intervention. Along with this, if the machine has to be restarted in the process of installation, the correct user credentials for logging in after restart is also required. The main advantage of installation automation is, it could be done in as many machines as possible, simultaneously also, as scripted. Thus feeding the machine details of all the machines where we are planning to install is also mandatory. All such things have to be taken care for the installation to go unattended as there won t be anyone to feed input in the midnight if it gets struck in between. Input configuration (as depicted in Fig. 4). 7

8 Fig. 4 There are a number of ways in capturing such points as input data for the automation scripts like in excel, xml, ini files, etc., We can add some custom events like validating the machine status or connections or even prerequisites before starting the installation in that particular machine mitigating any issues that may happen in between. Verifying the prerequisites before performing installation is the easily skipped process in manual installation where the person will feel annoyed of ensuring the already done things in multiple machines repeatedly. Thus installation automation can help greatly in doing such extra things which are monotonous to be done by a human and may cause any issue at unexpected situation. Designing the automation framework A test automation framework helps in constituting a platform or support for the automation testing. It is a collection of concepts/functional libraries which includes data handling, error handling, driver scripts etc., The benefits which come out of this framework could be increased code re-usability, less code maintenance, higher portability etc., Building the automation framework in a way to accommodate any minute changes in installation set up can help us in achieving the savings apparently. If the automation framework is designed to serve the very need of current set up, it may be easy to accomplish the installation automation and see revenue generated in a short span but it may cost high for maintaining it for the reworks that may knock us when the set up or the technology changes. Paying attention to a few points while designing the framework can save in falling blind into such risks in future. 8

9 Generally the installation comes in two flavors, one is via the UI screen where the user has to navigate from screen to screen and feed input. The other is the silent installation where passing the inputs and installation command in command line can carry over the installation itself. If the installation wizard itself is to be tested, then it s a wise choice to opt for interactive installation mode. Instead if the motto is to install the application only, the silent installation would be a best choice, if the option is been provided with the set up. As well in case of embracing the interactive installation, if the scripts are built in the way independent of UI control details, it removes the extra head ache of reworking on the scripts if the installation set up is changed. In that case the rework could be very minimal, like changing just the control information or adding some extra functions instead changing the script line by line. Points to be paid attention Script maintenance: The scripts developed for one release may not work for the other releases which come up with some UI screen changes or flow changes etc., Thus it is always better to consider the maintenance activities while planning for auto-installation so that with no/minimal code changes we will be able to handle such minor changes in installation wizard or installation flow. Lifetime of automated scripts: The lifetime of automated scripts is also to be considered as it makes no sense to automate the scripts which may last for a shorter span costing us more in developing such a suite than experiencing the benefits out of it. In a product with plan to change the technology/installation steps, the installation scripts developed may not last for a longer time without proper planning made with proactive consideration of such risks. Thus considering the lifetime of product, no of builds and in particular the lifetime of the scripts before implementing the installation automation is worthy to enjoy the benefits out of it. OS or platform dependency: The scripts developed for one platform may not work for the other. Or else some changes may be required for getting the scripts working in other platforms. Thus it is always helpful to concentrate on all required platforms, the platforms which may be added up in future etc., to make the scripts flexible enough to accommodate such changes removing the rework at crunch time. Conclusion 9

10 Installation automation can be a boon to increase the efficiency and decrease the manual efforts. But there could be a lot of loop holes in its implementation which can end up as a ban at the same time. This document has covered such loop holes and points to be considered in a generic fashion. Thus with proper planning and mitigation techniques, organizations can enjoy the remarkable amount of cost savings by experiencing the simple to see yet powerful in results auto-installation. References: Author s biography 10

11 Bhuvaneswari Radhakrishnan is working as an Engineer in Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab with 3.5 years of relevant experience in the area of Test Automation. She is Six Sigma Green belt Certified. She has completed B.E. in Electronics and Communication. Her key area of expertise is Test Automation. She works for the Productivity Enablers team in Honeywell wherein she plays a key role to formulate, propose and implement Productivity Strategies in her domain and product lines. Santosh Ayodhya has done BE in Electronics and Communications and is working as Tech Lead in Honeywell since 7 years in the area of Test Automation. He is a Six Sigma Green Belt certified. His key area of expertise is on identification, designing and building of Test Automation projects. He works for the Productivity Enablers team in Honeywell. 11