Tricentis and SAP recently released four (4) new SAP-branded solutions with some fancy acronyms: SAP TTA, SAP ECT, SAP CIA and SAP LTT. You can find the official Tricentis Test Automation for SAP (TTA) documentation here. This article focuses on the first two products and describes some of our own findings after a first SAP TTA deployment. It’s mostly very good!

1. What are the main differences between SAP TTA, SAP ECT and Tosca?SAP TTA is included in your SAP Enterprise Support agreement while SAP ECT is a paid product available on the SAP Price List (concurrent users). Tosca is the same solution as SAP ECT but is sold directly by Tricentis, the software publisher.

   SAP TTA is essentially an automation engine with no additional testing features, such as requirements, coverage, distributed executions, etc. It also only covers SAP and browser-based technologies, as opposed to SAP ECT that can virtually handle anything (Microsoft Office, Salesforce, ServiceNow and 150+ others).

2. Why are Tricentis Tosca and SAP Tricentis solutions not on the same release level?There is indeed a version gap between the original Tosca product and SAP branded solutions. As of now, the latest Tosca is 14.2 while SAP only offers 13.4. There will most likely always be a gap, however you are unlikely to experience breaking bugs because of it. SAP is planning to release the next version of SAP TTA & ECT before summer.
3. Do I need SAP Solution Manager or CloudALM to use Tricentis solutions?SAP Solution Manager is mandatory if you intend to deploy SAP TTA. Without it, you only have the ability to run automated tests… manually. However, with SAP ECT, it’s a different story. Both products have overlapping functionalities and you can choose to use one or the other. Of course, if you are already actively using SAP Solution Manager or intend to deploy some of its scenarios in the near future (such as ChaRM), it makes sense to choose SAP Solution Manager as the leading product.

   CloudALM is a different story. There is currently no integration with any of the Tricentis products. It seems the SAP TTA integration is planned for Q4 2021 but there is no date confirmation as of now. The process will be the same though: TTA is the automation engine to build your test cases, while CloudALM manages everything else from requirements to reporting.

4. Which technologies can I automate with SAP TTA?A lot! All SAP technology (UI5, WebDynpro, GUI, SF, Concur, etc.) are supported as well as any solution running in a browser (any website on the internet). You can not only run non-regression test cases but also API testing, which is something entirely new in SAP Solution Manager.

   Note that, for non-SAP solutions running in the browser, while you can technically do it, SAP will not provide you with any support. You’ll have to fix it yourself!

5. Who is supporting me if I need to raise an incident?SAP itself! Nothing changes for your team: they can directly raise an OSS ticket on the SAP One Support Launchpad. If the issue requires Tricentis attention, they will interact with you through the same OSS incident. The main OSS component is XX-PART-TRI-CLD-ECT.
6. What is the architecture I need to support those products?The system requirements are available here. There are 3 components to it:
   1. the ARA software, which is a standalone recording tool intended for business users with no access to the automation software
   2. the TTA or ECT client software, which automation engineers use to build test cases, handle data, define variants, etc.
   3. the TTA or ECT server that is mostly responsible for centralizing user access, data management and any administrator settings.

      We had no problem running it with 4vCPU and 16GB RAM on Windows Server 2016 for a small team. The server can also be cloud-based (not yet available for SAP-branded products), in which case Tricentis is hosting it for you.

7. How should I handle my test data with SAP TTA or SAP ECT?In both cases, the Tosca server is responsible for handling test data management. You can centralize all of your data through the Test Data Service and even play around with external data sheets. There is also the possibility to manage your data directly in SAP Solution Manager but is not recommended.
8. Can I create defects in case an automated test failed?With SAP TTA, you need to implement the Defect management process that is part of SAP ITSM and Test Suite in SAP Solution Manager. If you purchase SAP ECT then you can create issues directly in the product or setup an integration with Jira (pricing is unclear on this one).
9. Can I run distributed executions (multiple test cases in parallel)?SAP TTA relies entirely on SAP Solution Manager for unattended execution, and it does not allow distributed executions or any type of parallelism. However, SAP ECT is capable of handling very complex scenarios for distributed executions and offers powerful monitoring and reporting features as well.
10. How different is SAP TTA from SAP CBTA?Both solutions are very similar in spirit. They are really only automation engines and require SAP Solution Manager to do everything else. They are both model-based testing solutions, meaning the test cases are built with reusables components to minimize maintenance.

    In short, the only thing that changes for you is that, once your test configuration is created, the recording and engineering are done in SAP TTA and synchronized back into SAP Solution Manager.So, in the end, it all comes down to the fact that SAP TTA is a much more mature solution because Tricentis, the publisher, only does one thing: automation testing. You will have a better experience and, more importantly, tons of workarounds when something does not work as expected.

11. Which tool should I go with? SAP CBTA, SAP TTA or SAP ECT?Unless you are already using SAP CBTA, there is little value for new customers to implement it. For the two others, it really depends on your budget: if you have one, by all means, go with SAP ECT. It can do so much more and is a lot more flexible than the traditional SAP TTA + SAP Solution Manager combo. And that’s normal, you’re paying for the best!