Customer Reviews

SAP R/3 Testing with CATT

5 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(1)
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If you're involved in testing R/3 systems, this book should be on the shelf. We've all purchased a clunker or two when it comes to R/3 reference books -- this one's a keeper for a change!

The R/3 CATT tool is one of those golden gems that isn't given much notice, but is quite easy to use, surprisingly comprehensive, provides a wealth of robust features, and provides tremendous value-added potential to projects large and small. We'd looked at CATT way back with 3.0d and recoiled in horror -- it was simply brutal. Somewhere along the road SAP turned that ugly frog into a prince (and hardly told a soul in the process!). Committed to a 4.6b functional upgrade the first quarter of 2000 (we were one of, if not THE, first to take shipment of the software) we found our previous 3rd party test tool unsupported and, best case, at least one quarter behind shipping. Forced to take another look at CATT as the only product on the market "guaranteed" to work with 4.6b we were surprised and delighted at what we found. We printed everything off the system on-line help we could find, pieced together a workbook, found an SAP America CATT resource for guideance, and went off to our functional teams to "sell" CATT. This book was exactly what we were looking for.

The book offers overviews of testing as a whole, some development methodology/ASAP material that you can gloss over, and then provides procedural examples of simple test modules and test procedures that you can record/build on your own system. You can quickly move to record and build test modules for functionality within your own development scope. With this under your belt you can then begin to explore the robust features of the CATT Expert mode. Yet, even at this fairly simple low-level testing perspective, you've got a lot of R/3 testing power in hand.

A comprehensive test plan can be composed of these building blocks, test modules for each transaction within the business string, assembled into test procedures. The few limitations for CATT (transactions that behave differently in background vs. foreground, transactions that LEAVE TO TRANSACTION, screen-dependent selections (menu's, drill-down's, etc.)) can easily be isolated from the CATT-driven test plan and manually tested in a supplemental test plan.

The fruits of CATT test catalogues extend long after successful implementation 'go live'. Phased implementations benefit from having a regression test tool readily available to insure there are no unpredicted impacts within the existing production base functionality. Hot pack acceptance, and kernal upgrades are readily testable and even full-blown functional upgrades SHOULD be possible with minimal disruption to the test scripts EXCEPT where changes have occurred -- and the failure of your existing CATT scripts would point those areas out!

There's still a healthy market out there for third-party R/3 test tools, and of course CATT doesn't do everything. But for a "free tool" there's a lot of value out there to harness. This book is a solid step in that process.

Bought the book in March 2002 and much to my surprise, this book deals with R/3 Version 4.0. Given the CATT tool and workbench went through a major overhaul in versions 4.5 and 4.6 (including the addition of a new, simplified transaction), this should be recognized. If your buying this for the tool, be aware.

Easy to read, easy to summarize and most importantly you can start putting it to use day one. If you are beginning to look at the advantages of utilizing the CATT tool within your SAP project or you have reached that threshold of being able to capture scripts but need to take advantage of the power, risk reductions and cost savings provided by implementing test procedures on a more integrated level, then this is your book. The added bonus is it also provides an overall view of the system development life cycle utilizing the various different implementation methodoligies known today in an easy to understand format.

This book was given to me by my director, and so at first glance, I thought this book would put me to sleep.
For all you SAP Tester, after the first day of reviewing this book, I found it to be very easy to read and understand.
The terminolgy was easy to comprehend and at the back of the book there is a glossary for you to look up, if your not sure of the abbreviations used.

It's a definite book to be included in any SAP library.

The transaction with the seller was excellent but the book is outdated for current sap users.

This was probably a great book back in 2000 when it was published but it is showing its age. SAP has moved on and this book would be good if it did too.

This book was given to me by my director, and so at first glance, I thought this book would put me to sleep.
For all you SAP Tester, after the first day of reviewing this book, I found it to be very easy to read and understand.
The terminolgy was easy to comprehend and at the back of the book there is a glossary for you to look up, if your not sure of the abbreviations used.

It's a definite book to be included in any SAP library

Clear and concise guide to R/3 testing and optimization.This book gives a clear and concise approach to test and to optimize the R/3-System. What is most useful is that the customising is explained. I think this is one of the most useful sapbooks. By reading this EXCELLENT book i have learned how to automate tests, how to optimize R/3 business processes and to use the Computer Aided Test Tool effctively in an R/3 implementation, at each stage of the implementation model. As an experienced SAP consultant, I found this book extremely useful, comprehensive and concise.