IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Testing modules > Component testing > Testing with the Component Test Explorer
Overview
The Component Test Explorer is a fully functional component test environment that features a web interface. Using the Component Test Explorer, you can manage and run component tests as well as globally emulate human tasks and module components.
IBM Integration Designer component test projects are packaged as Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition web applications and they are typically deployed to a test environment server for initial processing and debugging. After these component test projects have been debugged, they are deployed to a non-UTE (unit test environment) server for subsequent processing. Typically, this server houses many test cases from many developers.
Because component test projects look just like other applications when they are installed on a server, it can be difficult to determine exactly what test cases are installed on a particular server. Component Test Explorer solves this problem with a web interface that displays the component test projects that are on the server as well as the associated test suites and test cases. Using Component Test Explorer, you can select and immediately run component test cases on the server. The results are automatically saved and displayed in the run history. Additionally, you can schedule test cases to run periodically and automatically save the results.
Although Component Test Explorer allows you to specify component and human task emulators in a component test case, you need a global emulator if the test case has not been designed for emulation or a resource that the test case will access is not available. Considering the test case deployment scenario again, the server housing the test cases might not contain all of the dependencies that are needed for the test cases to run successfully. In this case, you can use Component Test Explorer to create emulators that simulate the behavior of the missing dependencies.
In another scenario, you might have test cases running on a server that are not IBM Integration Designer component test cases. Therefore, the specified component or human task emulators are not supported.
For example, the test cases can be authored using another application, but the services being invoked might require human tasks to be completed. In this case, you can use Component Test Explorer to create emulators for the human tasks, which allows the test cases to complete successfully.