PDF Automation Tool
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Cognizant
Technologycontained
Solutionsherein is subject to change
Confidential
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©2009, Cognizant Technology Solutions
PDF Automation Tool – The Need
Background:
A large Insurance company in US has engaged Cognizant QA team for testing different releases. The
Cognizant team validates different enhancements in a particular release, and in the process, carries out
testing of all the impacted applications.
The Challenge:
For retrieving data from PDF documents, one needs a third party tool and hence extra investment by
Customer Organization. This tool overcomes this challenge through a workaround in QTP.
How it works:
The automation framework is developed using HP’s functional testing tool, Quick Test Professional v 9.0
and used the “Mercury Clipboard” class for the verification. The major Challenges faced while designing
the framework were:
 Compatibility issue of QTP 9.0 with PDF documents restricts the record & playback operation on PDF.
 Object Identification issues due to the dynamic behavior of the objects.
 Data from a PDF document looses the order and alignment while copying the same in a .txt file.
 Data location in a table of the PDF document varies depending on the business logic of the
requirement.
All the above challenges were taken care in the Framework by using clipboard concept, Layered
architecture for working simultaneously with mainframe and PDF and Message templates.
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PDF Automation Tool – How it helps
What it can do:
 Download
all PDFs related to a particular transaction to a local drive (this saves considerable
execution time especially if one is on VPN, as PDFs are not required to be open on Internet)
 Extract data from Mainframe screen for a particular transaction
 Compare the extracted data with PDF data
 Generate the comparison report
It raised our competitive advantage by:
 Verification of PDF contents which includes tables, messages, header, footer and boxes.
 Use of intermediate clipboard concept to reduce the time taken during data verification process.
 Controlling the data verification mechanism from excel based library containing message and
block templates.
 Effective reporting mechanism by providing detail description in case of success or failure.
 Work simultaneously with two different types of applications e.g. Mainframe and PDF.
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PDF Automation Tool – Benefits
Benefits to Client:
 Reduced cycle time for testing (1 day for 1 PDF to > 100 PDFs / day).
 Reduction in Manual testing effort by 15 times, leading to significant cost savings.
 Reduced automation effort because of effective reusability of scripts.
 Automation Script extended to Business users for day-today checking.
 The automation suite developed could indicate even trivial GUI errors – e.g., comma, end of line
missing etc.
 Dollar Savings of > $14 K
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PDF Automation Tool – Key Features
 Verification of PDF contents which includes tables, messages, header, footer and boxes.
 Use of intermediate clipboard concept to reduce the time taken during data verification process.
 Controlling the data verification mechanism from outside excel.
 Effective reporting mechanism by providing detail description in case of success or failure.
 Work simultaneously with two different types of applications e.g. Mainframe and PDF.
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Challenges faced during Pilot
 Compatibility issue of QTP 9.0 with PDF documents restricts the record and playback operation on PDF.
 Object Identification issues due to the dynamic behavior of the objects.
 Data from a PDF document looses the order and alignment while copying the same in a .txt file.
 Data location in a table of the PDF document varies depending on the business logic of the requirement.
 Different automation approach for COSMOS (PDF) and Vantage One (mainframe) applications.
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Learning's from the Pilot
 No direct support was provided by QTP for identifying PDF documents, therefore Mercury’s clipboard
object was used to retrieve data from PDF and do the comparison.
 Objects were quite dynamic in nature, therefore regular expressions were used wherever applicable for
the dynamic property values.
 Messages/blocks were to be verified in PDF, thus message templates were used to construct the
messages by taking values at runtime from Vantage One application.
 There was a need to work simultaneously with two applications, hence layered architecture was used to
facilitate working with Vantage and PDF simultaneously.
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Further enhancement plans
 New Riders
 New Product
launches
 Product Exchanges
 Online Statements verification from JH Annuities.com
 Confirms
 Verification of Fund Merger and Addition impacts
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Recommendation for institutionalization
Potential Areas of Reuse
 Areas involving verification of PDF contents which includes statements, messages, header, footer,
tables and blocks.
Limitations and Potential Barriers
 The
automation framework developed cannot be used to compare two PDF documents and list
out the differences.
 The
comparison might give incorrect results in case the extracted data exceeds the size of
clipboard.
Changes required
 The SDK available from Adobe can be used to read PDFs and do the comparison.
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Attachments (mandatory for home-grown tools)
Source Code
 Due to size constraints (3.15 GB), Source Code will be provided on request
Code Template
User Manual
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Thank You
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