Optimizing and Automating Complex Workloads for Greater IT Efficiency
                     OPTIMIZING AND 
AUTOMATING 
COMPLEX 
WORKLOADS
FOR GREATER
IT EFFICIENCY
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 //  Introduction
3 //  Challenge 
4 //  Strategy 
5 //  Key Findings 
6 //  Solution
7 //  Benefits 
8 //  HCL OneTest Highlights 
9 //  About This Case Study  
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
INTRODUCTION
The Workload Automation product Additionally, Workload Automation 
enables more than 2,000 leading allows scheduling dependencies 
organizations around the world to gain between disparate systems, and helps 
complete visibility and control over increase availability due to its true fault-
attended and unattended workloads. tolerant architecture.
From a single point of control, it 
supports multiple platforms, provides 
advanced integration with enterprise 
applications like SAP, Oracle, and 
Salesforce, and offers more than 35 out-
of-the-box plugins, including plugins for 
FTP and Hadoop activities. 
//2
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
CHALLENGE
In 2018, the Workload Automation Therefore, a new solution had to be 
test team began to prepare for the 9.5 found.
release in March 2019. 
The team evaluated updates to their 
This major release brought about a existing Selenium Robot framework 
complete redesign of the primary user while also looking at Katalon and HCL 
interfaces. Such radical change meant OneTest, primarily focusing on effort, 
that none of the existing test automation ease of use and maintainability as the 
assets were usable, and that the effort to success criteria.
re-engineer them was significant. 
The re-factoring process for existing 
scripts (based on manual interactions 
with a browser) would have been 
very time consuming, and since the 
tests were coded, they were also 
brittle. Additionally, the text-based 
development environment was not very 
intuitive for the testers, who adopted 
the framework, and it was difficult to 
document going forward.
SUCH RADICAL CHANGE MEANT THAT NONE OF THE EXISTING 
TEST AUTOMATION ASSETS WERE USABLE, AND THE THAT THE 
EFFORT TO RE-ENGINEER THEM WAS SIGNIFICANT.
//3
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
STRATEGY
The team was unhappy with its existing Support provided by the community 
framework due to daily instabilities in and even third-party vendors, was not 
execution, resulting in tests hanging or enough to satisfy the business-critical 
producing false positive outcomes and requirement for the automation.
leading to significant manual effort post 
execution. Hence, HCL OneTest was selected for 
a pilot program due to its offering of 
Also, the Selenium Robot framework a codeless solution with the added 
was generally considered too brittle and benefits of simple script maintenance 
a coded solution was not ideal for the and the ability to leverage API and 
team. Katalon was carefully considered database actions in test scripts. 
due to its strong out of the box 
capabilities. However the team noticed 
several problems when creating scripts, 
while finding the maintenance effort to 
be high. 
SUPPORT PROVIDED BY THE COMMUNITY AND EVEN THIRD-
PARTY VENDORS, WAS NOT ENOUGH TO SATISFY THE BUSINESS-
CRITICAL REQUIREMENT FOR THE AUTOMATION.
//4
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
KEY FINDINGS
At the conclusion of the four-month  • Intelligent object recognition  
pilot program, the following were the   during playback made scripts  
key findings:   resilient to changes and easy  
  to maintain
 • HCL OneTest proved to be a   
  convincing solution, capable   • The ability to re-use UI tests  
  not only of overcoming the    during performance testing  
  limits of the previous    leads to efficiencies in script  
  framework, but also adding    creation and earlier results
  significant value
 • Tests can be built that  
 • Natural language scripts are    combine the browser  
  auto-generated from    interactions with steps to  
  recording sessions, and can be    cleanup data and validate  
  augmented with additional    data on the back-end systems  
  steps in the IDE while the    providing richer and more  
  application is offline   robust workflows
 • Recording interactions with  
  the web page under test and  
  associating each action with a  
  navigable screenshot of the  
  page and DOM became  
  a natural and intuitive way of  
  working code-free
//5
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
SOLUTION
The team quickly created a modular Tests are executed as part of the build 
framework of atomic UI actions, which pipeline through Jenkins and execute 
were chained into Compound Tests to against four different environments in 
form user workflows. parallel.
Each of these workflows validates a With one set of scripts, users can 
range of functional and non-functional verify that the Workload Automation 
outcomes including verification of the UI core application functions correctly 
controls and values as well as verifying on Windows and Linux, as well as, 
parameters that are only accessible via each of the four supported database 
APIs and database queries. configurations: Oracle, DB2, Informix and 
MSSQL.
The entire test set of 174 end-to-end 
workflows (comprised hundreds of 
test modules) is decoupled from the 
test data which drives much of the 
logic of the test. This meant some test 
maintenance tasks are as simple as 
editing a .CSV file.
TESTS ARE EXECUTED AS PART OF THE BUILD PIPELINE 
THROUGH JENKINS AND EXECUTE AGAINST FOUR DIFFERENT 
ENVIRONMENTS IN PARALLEL.
//6
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
BENEFITS
 • Ported the entire Selenium test suite    • Configured the entire test suite as  
  (which had taken several years to    a Jenkins pipeline activity, exercising  
  create)   all deployment configurations of the  
  application
 • Created more than 600 test cases  
  to create a stable library of basic   • Highlighted more than 70 defects  
  operations   during the development cycle of  
   the Workload Automation product  
 • Gained confidence that new easily    – approximately 5% of the total  
  maintainable tests can be built within    defects found
  hours (not days as before) 
  • Option to run containerized test  
 • Achieved a 35% increase in coverage    engines simplifies CI/CD process
  with new tests and the ability to  
  bridge front and back end  
  components of the application
THE BENEFITS WERE ACHIEVED IN LESS THAN FOUR MONTHS.
//7
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
HCL OneTest HIGHLIGHTS
 • Script maintenance effort   • Re-use of test assets increased due  
  conservatively calculated at 50% to    to script modularity and  
  75% less than the other tools    compatibility of across the different  
  evaluated   test disciplines: UI, API and   
  Performance
 • Test coverage increased by 35% due  
  to the ease of use and depth/  • “Beyond the Contract” support via  
  breadth of technology coverage   HCL’s Client Advocacy Team  
  accelerated the project and provided 
 • Found 70 additional defects – 5%    a direct channel to product  
  fewer for customers to find   developers and product managers
//8
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y
ABOUT THIS CASE STUDY
HCL OneTest provides UI, API, and For more information, visit 
performance testing, as well as service hcltechsw.com/onetest.
virtualization and synthetic data 
fabrication to support testers throughout Copyright ©2020. All rights reserved. 
a project lifecycle. It features a script- No materials from this case study can 
less, wizard-driven test authoring be duplicated, copied, republished or 
environment and support for more than reused without the written permission 
100 technologies and protocols. from HCL Software. The information 
and insights contained in this case study 
HCL OneTest belongs to the DevSecOps reflect research and observations made 
product domain of HCL Software which by HCL Software.
is a division of HCL Technologies (HCL) 
that operates its primary software 
business. It develops, markets, sells 
and supports more than 20 product 
families in the areas of DevSecOps, 
Automation, Digital Solutions, Data 
Management, Marketing and Commerce, 
and Mainframes.
//9
//  C A S E  S T U D Y
O P T I M I Z I N G  A N D  AU TO M AT I N G  CO M P L E X  WO R K LOA D S  F O R  G R E AT E R  I T  E F F I C I E N C Y