What are the quarterly updates from Oracle Cloud, and why do you need to test them?
Let’s Understand the Oracle Cloud Quarterly Updates
The Oracle Cloud application is based on the principle of continuous development and innovation. This aims to maximize the benefits of the Oracle Cloud platform for all its customers. To achieve this objective, Oracle follows a quarterly release cycle after adding new functionalities and enhancements to the Oracle Cloud product.
For instance, in the Oracle Cloud ERP domain, hundreds of new functionalities are added during each quarterly update. Yvan Cognasse of Oracle Europe says that “with 4 feature updates each calendar year, this frequency compares to a 12–18-month cycle for on-premises deployments.”
Every quarterly update of Oracle Cloud introduces a smaller number of features and functionalities as compared to on-premises Oracle upgrades. However, the higher frequency of these updates means that customers and end-users do not have to wait long to use the new features. Besides, with the quarterly update cycle, customers get their application issues resolved faster.
Oracle Cloud quarterly updates can benefit a lot of Oracle customers and users. However, there is an increased risk to business operations due to shorter release cycles. Gartner estimates that just one hour of application or business process downtime can cost businesses up to $300,000. This means that organizations must test every quarterly update before deploying it to their production environment.
Next, let’s understand why Oracle Cloud quarterly update testing should matter to your business.
Why Should Oracle Cloud Quarterly Update Testing Matter?
Modern enterprises can no longer afford to see their business process fail, as this can directly impact their efficiency and productivity. Oracle Cloud customers must regard the following considerations when testing their quarterly updates:
- How can you keep pace with the testing of new quarterly updates in your IT environment?
- How can you ensure there is zero application downtime following an update?
- How can you effectively test every quarterly update on time?
- How can you improve the cost and time efficiency of your Oracle testing?.
Organizations configure their Oracle Cloud application according to their specific business requirement. Following any quarterly update, Oracle testing teams must focus on validating their existing configuration before leveraging any new product features. This is necessary to ensure that the latest update does not lead to any unexpected behavior in your application configuration.
Moreover, organizations must test their key business processes for the new Oracle Cloud update. Business process testing must include the execution and navigation steps, along with the variety of business functions and user roles.
Here are some key focus areas to include in your Oracle Cloud test plan:
- Third-party APIs, including XML and REST (through API testing)
- Third-party external systems
- UI testing for the user’s daily activities
- Custom workflows, including saved SQL queries and updates
- New product enhancements
To improve test coverage, automated testing is the best option for Oracle Cloud quarterly update testing. Let’s discuss that next.
How Automated Testing Can Help in Oracle Cloud testing
As more organizations adopt the Oracle Cloud, they often fail to cope with the frequent updates released by Oracle. As Oracle Cloud makes quarterly releases, organizations must revisit their Oracle testing strategy to leverage the business benefits.
In these circumstances, manual testing of Oracle Cloud applications is no longer a feasible and practical solution. Besides being time-consuming, manual testing offers limited test coverage and is prone to human errors.
Test automation of the Oracle Cloud can provide adequate test coverage and remove all “guesswork” from test cases. To that end, here are some specific ways in which test automation can address Oracle testing challenges:
- Oracle test automation improves the speed of testing by 80%, thus enabling organizations to leverage the quarterly updates from Oracle Cloud.
- Test automation provides 100% test coverage, thus ensuring minimum downtime for Oracle Cloud applications.
- Oracle test automation reduces costs by 50% as compared to manual testing.
- Automated testing every quarter frees QA teams to focus on other critical testing-related tasks to improve product quality.
Furthermore, with Oracle test automation, QA teams have more time to adapt to integrations, customizations, and procedures.
Using a codeless test automation platform, business users can also create and maintain their Oracle test cases (without requiring any technical help). This can further reduce the duration of testing cycles and free Oracle users from tedious manual work.
Next, let’s discuss why the ACCELQ platform is the best fit for Oracle Cloud quarterly update testing.
Why ACCELQ Is the Right Fit for Testing Oracle Cloud Quarterly Updates
The Oracle Cloud provides an ROI of 4.01x higher than that of on-premises Oracle deployments. Overall, ROI from Oracle Cloud has increased from 3.2x over the last two years. With the gradual increase in Oracle Cloud applications, organizations incur higher costs in testing these applications. Further, with regular quarterly updates from Oracle Cloud, QA teams find it challenging to leverage Oracle functionalities and complete their testing on time.
As a solution provider, ACCELQ has enabled Oracle customers to test their Oracle Cloud applications through test automation. Our expert team of Oracle professionals can help you with the continuous testing and development of Oracle apps. Across industry domains, our codeless test automation platform has accelerated software testing and increased its overall efficiency.
Here are some reasons why you should opt for ACCELQ codeless test automation platform for your Oracle Cloud:
- Faster and intuitive automated tests that are automatically triggered from process workflows
- Cross-browser testing for both on-premises and cloud environments
- Faster turnarounds enabled by parallel test executions
- Dynamic live reports of automated testing results, along with actionable report generation
Do you need professional expertise to test your Oracle Cloud applications? We can provide you with technical expertise. Simply sign-up today for a free product demo!
Frequently Asked Questions
How often are Oracle patches released?
Since April 2022, Oracle patches are released every third Tuesday in January, April, July, and October. The next date for the Oracle patch release is 17th January 2023.
What is Oracle EPM?
Short for Enterprise Performance Management, Oracle Fusion Cloud enables organizations to model and plan across business functions, including HR, Finance, Sales, and Supply Chains. This can drive better decision-making.
Which two update options are generally available for Oracle CX Cloud?
You can either use the Auto Update Sites or the Legacy Update Sites options to manage your Oracle CX Cloud releases.
GEOSLEY ANDRADES
Director, Product Evangelist at ACCELQ.
Being a Test Automation enthusiast, Geosley helps provide ACCELQ with innovative solutions to transform test automation to be simpler, more reliable, and sustainable for the real world. As a passionate Community Builder, Geosley drives Q Community – A Global Community of Test Automation enthusiasts, empowering testers to embrace Test Automation and helping them solve real-life complex testing challenges.
Related Posts
Will AI Power the Next Wave of Testing Transformation?
Will AI Power the Next Wave of Testing Transformation?
Test Strategy vs Test Plan Key Differences
