System and method for providing testing for a communities framework

• US 7,680,927 B2
• Filed: 03/07/2006
• Issued: 03/16/2010
• 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
• Primary Examiner(s): Chan; Wing F
• Assistant Examiner(s): THAI, NAM N
• Application Number:
  US11/370,098
• Publication Number:
  US 20070124460A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,470 Days
• Field of Search: 709/224, 709/226, 707/4, 707/10, 707/100, 705/9, 705/1, 714/E11.207, 717/124, 717/131
• 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, said system comprising:

a computer that provides a portal interface to access a community of users, the community including a plurality of members that share resources of the community, the portal interface being defined by a portal file stored on said computer;

a service component executing on said computer that provides a specific set of functions to the plurality of members in the community and allows the plurality of members to access said resources;

a dissassembler that automatically disassembles the portal file and creates an instance of the community associated with the service component; and

a unit test implemented in the instance of the community, wherein the unit test automatically defines at least one member of the community having particular membership capabilities, executes the specific set of functions provided by the service component as the automatically defined member, and inspects results of execution of the specific set of functions, wherein the unit test verifies access to a first level of security for the automatically defined member by validating said member'"'"'s membership capabilities and verifies access to a second level of security by validating said member'"'"'s entitlements.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of service components, wherein each service component has one or more community instances associated with a series of unit tests for said each service component.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

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

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

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

10. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

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

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the dissassembler parses the extensible markup language (XML) code of the portal file and reads one or more of:

pages, books, portlets, layouts and placeholders from said portal file in order to render the community instance.

6. A method for providing testing in a communities framework, said system comprising:

a computer that provides a portal interface to access a community of users, the community including a plurality of members that share resources of the community, the portal interface being defined by a portal file stored on said computer;

a service component executing on said computer that provides a specific set of functions to the plurality of members in the community and allows the plurality of members to access said resources;

a dissassembler that automatically disassembles the portal file and creates an instance of the community associated with the service component; and

a unit test implemented in the instance of the community, wherein the unit test automatically defines at least one member of the community having particular membership capabilities, executes the specific set of functions provided by the service component as the automatically defined member, and inspects results of execution of the specific set of functions, wherein the unit test verifies access to a first level of security for the automatically defined member by validating said member'"'"'s membership capabilities and verifies access to a second level of security by validating said member'"'"'s entitlements.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the unit test is an HTML unit test written by a developer.

8. The method of claim 6 wherein the unit test accesses the community instance simulating a user with one or more membership capabilities.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the member is given membership in the community instance by mapping the user to a membership capability.

11. A computer-readable storage medium storing one or more sequences of instructions wherein said instructions, when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to:

provide a portal interface to access a community of users, the community including a plurality of members that share resources of the community, the portal interface being defined by a portal file;

maintain a plurality of service components, each service component providing a set of specific functions to the plurality of members in the community and enabling the plurality of members to access said resources;

select at least one service component;

disassemble the portal file to instantiate a community instance and associate the community instance with the service component; and

execute a unit test in the community instance wherein the unit test automatically defines at least one member of the community having particular membership capabilities, executes the specific set of functions provided by the service component as the automatically defined member, and inspects results of execution of the specific set of functions, wherein the unit test verifies access to a first level of security for the automatically defined member by validating said member'"'"'s membership capabilities and verifies access to a second level of security by validating said member'"'"'s entitlements.