System and method for providing testing for a communities framework

• US 20070124460A1
• Filed: 03/07/2006
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/17/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Cleveland, Amy, McMullen, Cindy
• Granted Patent: US 7,680,927 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A community for maintaining user membership can be provided. Each major component of the communities framework can have multiple portals associated with its series of tests. Each of these portals can start out as a portal file. These portal files can be ran through the dissassembler in order to render the portals representing individual community instances. Once the community instance is created for the portal, various HTML unit tests can be written by the developer in order to access that portal as some user with given membership and functional capabilities. The test framework can automatically create users giving them membership in the community and mapping them to membership capabilities. The component code can subsequently be accessed in the context of a real user or member of the community. In this manner, a more realistic and efficient testing environment is achieved.

Claims

1. A system for providing testing in a communities framework, comprising:

a computer that provides access to a community via a portal, the community including one or more members;

a service component that provides services to the members in the community and allows the members to access a set of resources;

an instance of the community created in the portal and associated with the service component; and

a test implemented in the instance of the community, wherein the test executes the services provided by the service component and checks the results of that execution.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein each service component has one or more community instances associated with its series of tests.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a portal file containing data that enables the portal to be rendered.

4. The system of claim 3 further comprising:

a dissassembler for rendering the portal by disassembling the portal file and employing the data contained therein.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the community instance is created automatically from the portal file by running each portal file through the dissassembler.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a repository for storing the set of resources wherein data within the repository can be manipulated by the members via the service component.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the test is an HTML unit test written by a developer.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the test accesses the community instance simulating a user with one or more membership capabilities.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the user is created automatically by the test and wherein the user is given membership in the instance of the community by mapping the user to a membership capability.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the service component code is executed in the context of a real member of the community.

19. The method of claim 10 further comprising:

providing a repository that contains a set of resources wherein members of the community can access the resources via the component.

11. A method for testing components of a communities framework, comprising:

selecting a component that provides services to the communities framework;

associating a community instance with the component; and

executing a test in the community instance for testing the services provided by the component.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

providing a portal representing the community instance for enabling access to the component services.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

providing a portal file containing data for enabling the portal to be rendered.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

rendering the portal by disassembling the portal file and employing the data contained in the portal file.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the community instance is created automatically from the portal file by running each portal file through the dissassembler.

16. The method of claim 11 wherein the test is an HTML unit test written by a developer.

17. The method of claim 11 wherein the test accesses the community instance simulating a user with one or more membership capabilities.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the user is created automatically by the test and wherein the user is given membership in the community instance by mapping the user to a membership capability.

20. A computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by one or more processors cause the system to:

select a component providing services to the communities framework;

associate a community instance with the component; and

execute a test in the community instance for testing the services provided by the component.