Page Comparison

The ERP Report Test Case is a collection of Report Test Variants.

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1. RFC Destination – RFC destination that will be used for Report Variant execution.

2. Variant Description – The description of the new Report Variant. Following placeholders are allowed in the description:
   • <REPORT> - will be replaced with the name of the report defined in this variant
   • <VARIANT> - will be replaced with the name of the report variant defined in this variant
   • <DATE> - will be replaced with the current date on the system
   • <TIME> - will be replaced with the current time on the system

3. Report (required) – Technical name of the report to be used for image creation.

   Note
   Validate creates before and after images from the report execution spool. Only reports that create such spools when executed in a background job should be used

   
   

4. Report Variant (ABAP Variant) – Variant of the specified report to be used when the report is executed. These variants can be managed in transaction SE38.

5. After Image Variant ID – ID of the Report Test Variant that is used for the after image creation. This allows you to compare the output of different Reports/Report Variants or outputs from different systems.

By clicking on Advanced Settings we can define comparison settings, that will be used at the comparison stage of the variant. If nothing is changed in comparison settings, the default Simple Report Comparator will be used. We can change the following settings:

1. Ignore Date and Time - Each report comparator is capable of ignoring timestamps in several standard formats that often cause the difference in the output of reports as they are executed at different times. Following date format patterns are recognized with all date notation (using delimiters '.', '/' and '-' ):   mm*dd*yyyy, dd*mm*yyyy, yyyy*dd*mm, yyyy*mm*dd,  mm*yyyy, yyyy*mm. Following time format are recognized:  hh:mm:ss, hh:mm.

   Info
   Each recognized date and time is internally not removed but replaced with special character '#' in appropriate character length, e.g.: '16.04.2020' with '##########', '04/2020' with '#######' or '21:56:06' with '########'

   
   

2. Compare Only Data – Each report comparator can ignore lines that don't contain any alpha-numerical character (0-9, a-z, or A-Z).

3. Report Comparison Type – Datavard Validate comes by default with five report comparators:
   
   • Simple Report Comparator compares the report output in B-image and A-image row by row so matching lines have to be in the same position. This comparison is suitable for auditing if frozen data was affected by some change on the same system after a time. 
   • Advanced Report Comparator searches for the exact match of a row from Before Image in After Image rows independent of the position of row. Each row in the before image and after image is normalized before comparison. The process of row normalization depends on selected comparison attributes and defined mapping if was chosen.

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1. • Python Report Comparator uses language Python on the application server layer to compare before and after image. To use this comparator there must be Python version 2.7 or higher installed on the application server (or remote application server) then appropriate python script loaded to Validate repository and finally some additional expert setup has to be done. This option of the comparator is switch switched off by default in Validate Backend Settings. The python comparator does the same as Advanced Report Comparator with using predefined mapping and custom specific mapping but also with the option to propose (generate) mapping from deep analyses of before and after image report output. The alpha version of the python comparator script is available on demand.  
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5. Mapping Name - input for the name of the custom-specific mapping. It allows you to define your own mapping to match some report's specific differences in standard report outputs caused by different versions of the SAP system or caused by custom changes and setup. The option is available for all Report Comparator Types except Simple Report Comparator. A combination of predefined mapping and custom-specific mapping is allowed. In such a case, the predefined mapping is applied first on all rows. How to define custom specific mapping is described in the section 14617145Define mapping for report comparison.

6. Line Threshold - available only with Report Comparator with Threshold. It sets the threshold to evaluate the minimal similarity of the line from before image to any line from after image to consider it as a matched line. Valid input is float value of range from interval 0.01 to  1. The default value is 1 which means the exact match of lines.

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1. Reports – In this table, you can specify individual report variant pairs. You can use wildcards in the variant definition - '*' and '+'. These will get translated into proper variant names after clicking on a Check or Continue button. 
2. Descriptions - These description descriptions will be added as a description for all specified report variants - you can specify a different description for before and after image. 
3. RFC Destination - this defines the system where report variants are located.
4. Comparator Settings - Here you can define the type of comparison to be used and its related parameters.

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_{Where Used List for Variant}

Mass Edit Variants

You can edit more Report variants at once. Mass edit is done by selecting the required variants in the list and clicking on 'Mass Edit Variants' Image Modified button, a Dialog for mass edit of variants is then displayed. 

Image Modified

These are settings for comparison and variants, which are applied to every variant user selected. Changes to these values are done after clicking on the 'Continue' (Enter) button. By marking the 'Edit' checkbox (on the left) only the values, which you want to be changed will be replaced in selected variants. Only variants that are not yet used in test runs can be changed by mass edit. Before the change, mass edit checks if the variant is used as before or after image in any test run. If the variant is not editable or has another problem, a warning/error message is displayed in the log.

Report Variant Editor

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