Test Isolation in ABAP made simple

[MichaelSauter]

Are you tired of long-running, unstable tests? Test Isolation might help with that. In most technology stacks, there is an abundance of frameworks and tools to help with that. But in the ABAP environment, there are fewer open source libraries to help there and it's harder to import them into the systems to use them.

But how can I isolate my unit tests in ABAP, then?

Actually, there are quite a few helpful tools to help there and there are more and more coming.

But finding the existing ones, learning about new ones and being able to use them can still be hard. That's why I created a repository containing examples of all existing test isolation tools which are currently available in the ABAP platform.

The Idea

The idea of this repository is to show how to use any test environment, helper class and some common design patterns that help with isolating your code under test from its depended-on components.

How To Use This Repository

If you want to isolate your code under test from the components it uses, you need to take a look at what your depended-on component is. Each isolation technique for a specific kind of depended-on component is used separate test class of the global class ZATI_CL_CODE_UNDER_TEST.
The table below shows which test class uses which tool to isolate against which kind of depended-on component.

 

Test Class	Depended-On Component	Tool
ltc_call_other_object	Classes	Self-made test doubles
ltc_call_other_object_fw	Classes	ABAP Object Oriented Test Double Framework
ltc_call_function_module	Function Modules	Function Module Test Double Framework
ltc_select_database_table	Database Tables and CDS Entities	ABAP SQL Test Double Framework
ltc_select_cds_entity	Database Artefacts which are used in CDS	ABAP CDS Test Double Framework
ltc_call_authority_check	Authority Checks	Classic ABAP Authority Check Test Helper API
ltcl_call_rap_bo_tx_bf_dbl	RAP Business Objects	Transactional Buffer Double Support
ltcl_call_rap_bo_mock_eml_api	RAP Business Objects	Mock EML API Support

The Future of This Repository

I'll do my best to stay up-to-date with frameworks that come up in the ABAP stack, but you are all invited to contribute to the repository! Share your thoughts, comment on this post if I missed something and let me know what you need there.

If you feel like having a more detailed explanation, a tour through the terminology being used and the repository itself, you can join on September 7th here. If you want to add it to your calendar, here's the download.