Quality Center upgrade to v11

I have done an upgrade recently which was from QC 9.2 to ALM11. I am trying to document the steps followed and challenges faced during the upgrade.

Prerequisites for upgrade

1. QC 9.2 repository should be over file system. 
2. Note: QC 9.2 repository can be over database or over file system. If it is over database then move those project repositories to over file system as ALM 11 does not support repository over database.
3. Take a backup of the existing project repository from QC 9.2 server.
4. Copy the repository backup to the destination server where you are going to install ALM 11.
5. Take a copy of existing site admin schema and project schema’s from the database server
6. Restore this backup to the database server which is being used as a DB server for ALM11.
7. Please note that keep the copy of DB schemas and repository in case of failed upgrade and project gets corrupted. This helps to restore the project again for upgrade.
8. Make sure entire oracle database is backed up.
9. Please make sure that all the owners of the project are informed.
10. HP Service Agreement ID – for downloads, support requests and knowledge documents.
11. License key for QC 11 installation.
12. Installation files for ALM 11.

Upgrade Strategy

•        Backup: Backup of project repository and database schema for site admin and projects.
• 
  
•        Install: Installation of QC 11 and upgrading the site admin schema during installation so that all the users  and projects are upgraded with that.
• 
  
•        Upgrade and Test: Step by step upgrading the project using the upgrade tool provided by QC 11.
• 
  
•        Restore: In case of failed upgrade, restoration of the project using the backup of the project in database and project repository over file system.

Detailed Upgrade Steps

1. Check if all the project repositories are over file system, if not move those to over file system.
2. Do a fresh installation of Oracle on the server machine
3. Take backup of repository from QC 9.2 server
4. Take backup of database and project schemas
5. Copy the project repository to the server machine
6. Create a copy of the site admin schema and project schema in the new database server installed for ALM 11
7. Start installation of ALM 11 using the existing site admin schema
8. Upgrade the projects once installation is done by following below steps:
1. Verify
2. Repair
3. Upgrade
9. Test upgraded production environment
1. Alert the project stakeholders about the completeness of the project upgrade.
2. Verify that you can connect to the projects in Site Administration.
3. Ask project users to check that they can log in to all ALM projects using their account.
4. Alert project stakeholders to perform the sanity tests.
5. Ask the users to perform their routine operations and report feedback such as response time or the occurrence of errors.
6. Ask the users to check new features and functionalities within ALM and provide feedback.
7. Check the users' group permissions that may be set by default for new features, and modify them if necessary.
8. Perform a load test on the testing environment to verify that it can handle the intended number of users.
9. If you are using HP integration or a third-party tool with ALM, validate backward compatibility of the integration.

Project upgrade to ALM 11

• Remove the project from the list as this has come as part of site admin schema upgrade and points to the old repository path and database.
• For “dbid.xml” reference, create an empty project in the fresh ALM installation. Now this dbid.xml file can be used to restore different projects. Location of this file can be anywhere in the system (ex desktop) as while upgrade the actual dbid.xml file of project would be upgraded by the upgrade tool.
• Update “dbid.xml” file following fields

           <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

           <ProjectDescription>

                <PROJECT_NAME>Project Name</PROJECT_NAME>

                <DB_TYPE>3</DB_TYPE>

                <DESCRIPTION>Created on 2013-06-24 20:00:11</DESCRIPTION>

                <DB_CONNSTR_FORMAT>DB Connection String (will be taken from sample project db file)</DB_CONNSTR_FORMAT>

                <DB_NATIVE_AUTHENTICATION>N</DB_NATIVE_AUTHENTICATION>

                <DB_NAME>Name of restored DB schema for the project</DB_NAME>

                <DBSERVER_NAME>Name of ALM 11 DB server</DBSERVER_NAME>

                <DB_USER_PASS>Copy password from sample project </DB_USER_PASS>

                <PR_HAS_VCSDB>N</PR_HAS_VCSDB>

                <PHYSICAL_DIRECTORY>Location of the project repository in the file system</PHYSICAL_DIRECTORY>

                <USERS_QUOTA>-1</USERS_QUOTA>

                <PR_IS_ACTIVE>Y</PR_IS_ACTIVE>

                <SAQ_IS_ACTIVE>N</SAQ_IS_ACTIVE>

                <VM_REPOSITORY></VM_REPOSITORY>

                <PR_LANGUAGE>English</PR_LANGUAGE>

                <PROJECT_TYPE>Standard</PROJECT_TYPE>

                <IS_TEMPLATE>N</IS_TEMPLATE>

                <PROJECT_UID>Take this from sample project dbid and change some letters</PROJECT_UID>

                <PR_SMART_REPOSITORY_ENABLED>Make this parameter as ‘N’</PR_SMART_REPOSITORY_ENABLED>

                <PR_IS_QPM_AUTO_CALC_ENABLED>Y</PR_IS_QPM_AUTO_CALC_ENABLED>

          </ProjectDescription>

• After updating dbid.xml file, we need to restore the project using this dbid file. For this we have two option:
•  To go to the domain you want to restore the project into, right click and select “Restore Project” option
•  Or on the right hand pane on the select restore project option
• Select the updated bdid.xml file to restore the project.
• Click on restore button.
• Deactivate the project to perform further upgrade activities.
• In the right hand pane check if DB path and repository path are correct.
• Select “Verify Project” option and start verification of the project
• Logs are stored at: \sa\DomsInfo\MaintenanceData\out\\\
• Repair the project by selecting the “Repair Project” option
• Upgrade the project by selecting “Upgrade Project” option
• Active the project using “Activate Project” option
• Test the project by logging into ALM and check the project if it is accessible.

Upgrade Issues and Workarounds

Issue 1: APM_2.0, BPTA_2.00 and SPI_2.0 were not available while upgrade.

Resolution: The folders were taken from QC9.2 installation folder and placed at the ALM11 server. This helped to solve the issue. These extension files contain additional fields which need to be created as part of enabling these extensions in ALM.

Issue 2: Upgrade extension files were missing from APM_2.0_to_2.6 and SPI_2.0_to_2.6

Resolution: There were other upgrade extension files were available in the folder for other version upgrades ex. 2.1 to 2.6, 2.5 to 2.6 etc. This is an xml file which calls a java file which is invoked for version upgrade and this is the same file called for all the different enterprise extension versions which needs to be upgraded. To fix this issue we copied an existing xml file and renamed it to “upgrade_APM_2.0_to_2.6” and “upgrade_SPI_2.0_to_2.6” respectively.

Issue 3: While upgrade we got the error unable to load the file, fields mentioned in the xml file are already available in the main database.

Resolution: What we understood from this issue is that the given XML file is used to create additional fields in the database to enable the extension. If the fields were already available upgrade tool was throwing the error. To fix this issue we deleted the fields which were there in the database. Since it is the file referring to BPTA extension and BPT module is integrated with ALM11 as a default module, all the fields were available in the database. So we deleted all the fields from the xml file.

Issue 4: Post upgrade while clicking on Test script tab for the existing script ALM was throwing the error:

When we right click on the component it shows “go to flow instead of “Go to component”. So components are being shown as a flow after upgrade.

Resolution: We created on sample scenario and when we are clicking on the newly created component it is showing that as go to component and this functionality is working fine.

When we compared closely the their corrosponding rown in the database we found out that value of “CO_BPTA_FLOW_TEST_ID” was set to 0 which means that it is pointing to a flow with ID=0. But in reality it was a business component and hence this field should be NULL. As a resolution we changed the value to this field to null and this solved the issue. Since we upgraded from QC 9.2 and there are no flows used in that version there was not possibility of anything malfunctioning by this change.

Query used: UPDATE COMPONENT set CO_BPTA_FLOW_TEST_ID=''

Lessons Learnt

1. Setup files for installation should be downloaded beforehand
2. Availability of licenses should be confirmed
3. Availability of HP-SAID should be there to ensure access to HP support documentation and patches
4. Should keep backup in case of project gets corrupted and needs to be restored for upgrade

Above write-up is written based on my experience with the upgrade. It would be great if you can add your experiences to this :-))

References:

1. ALM 11 Admin guide

2. ALM 11 upgrade best practices

3. Various blog posts

4. Discussion with learned colleagues

Automating SAP portal based application automation issues and possible resolutions

Few challenges which I have encountered while automating the SAP portal based applications and I am trying to put them below hoping it would help someone like me (or probably me in future looking for help :-) about code) :

Before going to the specific challenges I would like to write about what I have understood about the SAP NetWeaver portal. They have tried to standardize the controls by clubbing basic HTML web elements in a specific order and then come up with a framework for the portal. So basically at the core it is web add in which helps to identify the objects on the application. Since the portal is relatively new (compared to ECC), it is not as stable as ECC is when it comes to automating the UI using QTP. In this context few of the challenges which I am trying to document below:

1. SAPCombo: It is recorded by the tool but when you try to play back the script the control is not identified by the tool. How it actually works is that when you spy the object you will find that it is a WebEdit and on its click event a webtable opens up which contains the elements of the combo box. To handle this there may be two ways:

a. First add the WebEdit to your object repository-> click on WebEdit in the code-> create a description of the web element from the table you want to click-> add web table to the repository-> use child item method of the WebTable to click on the element you want to click

objDesc=Description.create
objDesc("micClass").value="WebElement"
objDesc("name").value="One"

Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebEdit("EditBox").click
set childobj=Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebTable("Table").childobjects(objDesc)
childobj(0).click  (Just find out which native method this object support and invoke that method)

b. Create a Wscript.Shell object and use the sendkey method to perform the action. There may be issues while using this method and I prefer the above method, but in some case when you are not able to figure out the unique identification properties or the placement of the WebEdit(required for childitem method) object in the table cell, it is the method left to go with and works well.

2. SAPEdit: I have noticed that qtp tries to identify the SapEdit using html id property to identify the object, but every time you login a new id is assigned to the object and the script fails. I try to solve this problem is by going by regular expression and index property. Mostly the id is represented something like: WD78DA, where initial WD is constant and remaining string keeps changing. To address this issue what I do is put it as a regular expression- WD.*, and then find out the index of the edit box on the screen and use this property. I have not see this index changing and it helps me to solve this issue. Don't forget to remove the "sapattachedtext" property if that is being used by the tool

3. SAPEdit inside a WebTable: In such case apart from going by indexes and regular expression, you can use childitem method to enter the value in a particular SAPEdit box embedded inside the WebTable.

Browser().Page().WebTable().childItem(1,2, "WebEdit",0).set "Value"

4.SAPButton: Sometimes I have experienced that when you are adding and SAPButton using add button in the object repository, you will find two SAPButton objects at the bottom in the object hierarchy which QTP is showing, in that case you just go ahead and check the second last object in the hierarchy as I have experienced that it had the name property which helped tool to identify the object while execution whereas tool faced difficulty when I added the last object in the hierarchy as it did not have fixed recognition properties associated with the object.

Please post other issues as well if you have faced while automating SAP netweaver portal and how you resolved those. That would help. Thanks.

Some Custom functions in QTP

I am placing few of the custom function which I have written, below. These can be reused in the same form without changes and will try to add more here.

'***************************************************************************

Function current_date(date_format)

dim c_date

   Select Case date_format

  Case "dd.mm.yyyy"

c_date=Day(now())&"."&Month(Now())&"."&Year(Now())

Case "dd/mm/yyyy"

c_date=Day(now())&"/"&Month(Now())&"/"&Year(Now())

   End Select

   current_date=c_date

End Function

'***************************************************************************

Sub sap_exit()

SAPGuiSession("type:=GuiSession","name:=ses.0.").Reset " "

SAPGuiSession("type:=GuiSession","name:=ses.0.").Reset "ex"

End Sub

'***************************************************************************

'This function returns arrays of dates from_date to to_date

Function middle_dates(from_date, to_date)

f_date=getdate(from_date)

t_date=getdate(to_date)

'msgbox "start:"&f_date &"/n End:" & t_date

diff=datediff("d",f_date,t_date)

num_elements=CInt(diff)

dim arr_date()

ReDim arr_date(num_elements)

arr_date(0)=format_date(f_date,"dd.mm.yyyy")

For counter=1 to diff

d_var=dateadd("d", counter,f_date)

arr_date(counter)=format_date(d_var, "dd.mm.yyyy")

Next

middle_dates=arr_date

End Function

'***************************************************************************

' This function takes date in dd.mm.yyyy format and convert it to the system date format to be processed

function getdate(d)

str=Split(d,".")

str_day=str(0)

str_month=str(1)

str_year=str(2)

d=dateserial(str_year,str_month,str_day)

'msgbox d

getdate=d

end function

'***************************************************************************

'This cuntion converts date to the required format

Function format_date(dt, format)

return_date=""

  d=CInt(day(dt))

If d<10 Then

d="0"&cstr(d)

End If

m=cint(month(dt))

If m<10 Then

m="0" & cstr(m)

End If

y=year(dt)

Select Case (format)

Case "dd.mm.yyyy"

 return_date=d &"." & m & "." & y 

End Select

format_date=return_date

End Function

'***************************************************************************

'get temp file path

Function getTempFilePath(fileName)

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set colEnvironment = objShell.Environment("PROCESS")

objPath = colEnvironment("temp")

getTempFilePath=objPath&"\"&fileName

End Function

'***************************************************************************
'Generic function to capture screenshot

'Funciton to capture the screenshot

Function CaptureScreenshot(obj)

obj.capturebitmap gettempfilepath("screenshot.png"), true

    CaptureScreenshot=gettempfilepath("screenshot.png")

End Function

'***************************************************************************
'Function Name:current_time
'Function returns current time in HH:MM:SS format

'******************************************************************************************************************

Function current_time()
   current_time=hour(now())&":"&minute(now())&":"&second(now())
End Function

'***************************************************************************

'This subroutine logs SAP status bar event

Sub ReportStatusBarEvent_Desc(obj,desc, screenshot)

   text=obj.getROProperty("text")

   msgtype=obj.getROProperty("messagetype")

If Strcomp(msgtype,"S",1)=0 Then

reporter.ReportEvent  micPass,desc, text, screenshot

else

reporter.ReportEvent  micFail,desc, text, screenshot

End If

End Sub

'******************************************************************************************************************

'Function Name:CustomWait
'Description:This function is written to have custom wait on object
'******************************************************************************************************************
Sub CustomWait(obj, MaxWaitTime)
flag=true
counter=0
While (flag AND counter<=MaxWaitTime)
If obj.exist Then
'If obj.getroproperty("enabled") Then
flag=false
wait 3
'End If
else
wait 3
counter=counter+3
End If
Wend
End Sub

'*****************************************************************************************************************

'Function Name:CustomSendKeys

'Description:Function to use sendkeys operation

'******************************************************************************************************************

Sub CustomSendKeys(obj, desc)

    set wsh=createobject("WScript.Shell")

wsh.SendKeys desc

Set wsh=nothing

End Sub

'******************************************************************************************************************

'You can register these functions with multiple object using registeruserfunc .