Azure Devops

DevOps/Azure

DevOps is a mechanism or methodology in which Development and Operation teams work together. They work together in the whole SDLC to make the quality product , enhance the team efficiency, and quick delivery and easy roll back of the code if needed.

The first step in a project is Planning. After that Development/coding , then testing and then deployment to production. There are other steps in between each of these steps but in overall these are the major steps.

So, when the code is in production, the operation team takes care of the production code plus the customer feedback. If there is any issue with the code in production environment or if customer is having any kind of issue, customer’s feedback which could help enhance the product, those issues and feedback have to be conveyed to the developer. If the developer is not available or if the developer can not take care of the production issue immediately then the operation team will have to wait for the fix. Similarly, the Dev team has to wait for the operation teams feedback, or when operation team reach out to the developer with issues, the developer might be working on different code or different version or build. So the two teams are not in the same page. Hence there is inter dependencies of the development team and the operation team.

To overcome this problem, a new concept was brought in which is DevOps. In this, the dev team and the operation team work together. The code is deployed simultaneously on the dev environment and the production environment. And the testing is carried out simultaneously.  And whatever issue is noticed, they are taken care immediately. So, there is more rapid integration and deployment. In  other word, more rapid Develop, Test and Deploy.  

DevOps is a tool which implements continuous integration and continuous deployment. This covers the entire SDLC.  Sometimes DEVOPS is also called as extension of Agile.

Agile contains these steps : Plan ,  Code , Build, Test

DevOps contains above steps plus : Release , Deploy, Operate, Monitor

There are many tools take part in the process of CI/CD.  

Plan

Code : Eclipse , git, jira

Build :  Maven

Test : Selenium , Junits

Release : Jenkins, Bamboo

Deploy : Puppet

Operate :

Monitor: Splunk

In Devops,  testing is carried out quite often and at every steps. So , the term continuous testing is used in DevOps .

CI/CD : Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment:

CICD is the process of developing and deploying the code rapidly. In this process , the code is small piece of code and they are fixed and deployed quite often , sometimes more deployments happen in a single day. This way, the defect is found and fixed quickly and easily. And the product is more stable.

Azure :

Azure is a cloud computing platform that is owned by Microsoft . Azure  provides you the cloud services. The components/services of Azure :

Azure Pipelines

Azure Repos

Azure Boards

Azure Artifacts

Azure TestPlans

Azure Repos : This is a repository of Azure. It is like GitHub(both are microsoft products) where you can store, pull , push, commit your codes. You can also branch the repo like in GitHub.

Azure Boards : It is a dashboard to display the activities or updates of the SDLC in Azure, it tracks the activities.

Azure Artifacts : It keeps track of SDLC artifacts, maintain and share your project.

Azure Test Plan : This helps you develop your testing plans, ie, plan your test.

Azure Pipelines : This works as a pipeline to connect the CI and CD. It connects two different working environments or clouds. Continuous integration is code development , fixing, testing activities. When the code is deployed , it is made available to the azure environment through pipeline.  Azure pipeline integrates with the Version control systems such as GitHub, Subversions or other systems. It take the latest CICD code from there.

Azure pipelines supports almost all languages: Java, Python, C++, C#, PHP, .NET etc.

Azure pipelines is platform independent, it provides you all kinds of operating platform.

Your run or deploy your code to any targets such as any virtual machines, or other clouds.

Azure pipeline supports your open sources applications.

Azure Devops- practical steps:

In Azure dashboard:

1.      For first time users, need to create an organization.

2.      Create a project  >  you can delete the project as well.

3.      Choose to keep the project private or public

4.      Inside the project you can find the 5 services : Azure Pipeline, Azure Repos, Azure Boards, Azure Artifacts , Azure TestPlans

5.     Here  you can click the service you want.

Azure PipeLines

1.      Click Pipelines, click Create new pipeline

2.      Choose where is your code located : Github or Bitbucket cloud, Azure Repos Git and other options are there.

3.      Let’s select Github for example.

4.      You get the list of repositories, select the right one.

5.   Once code is open , there is run button available to run your code.

6.   Once run is complete , it provides you the log of the execution.

7.   The result part has three sections, logs, summary and tests.

8.   Click Release button if you want to deploy your code to some other targets available there.

9.   Click Overview on the left hand bar , it displays the project status.

10.   Dashboard on the left hand side bar shows the history of activities. If there is nothing in the dashboard, then you need to add a widget. Click add a widget button and then select and add a widget. Then go to the dashboard again, click the recent activity and it shows the activity in the widget.

11.   Click Pipeline, and you can update your code here.

12.   Fork means make copy of the code, make changes and then commit to the master code, master is the latest executable code with proper access and rights.

Azure Test Plan

1.      Open your project in Azure.

2.      Click Test plan.

3.      Click New Test Plan

4.      Give test plan name --- to create new test plan, and click Create

5.      After test plan is created, inside you will see tabs:Define , Execute , Chart. If you compare with QC, Define is like test plan, Execute is like Test Lab.

6.      Click Define --- you will see options to create Test Suite, Assign Configurations, Export, Assign Testers to run all tests, Import Test Suites.

7.      Click Test Suite --- There are three categories displayed: Static , Requirement based and query based.

8.      Static suite : Click Static suite and give it a name.---now you can add test cases to this test suite, new test case or existing test case.

9.      Click create new test case, same like in QC, you give the test case name, steps, expected results.

10.   To add existing test case, click add existing test case , check the parameters available there, make change as per your project if needed. You can add new clause(parameter )if needed. Click RUN button , then you see the set of existing test cases.

11.   Select test case and click on ADD.

12.   Now you suite will have the test cases , this way you can create this suite.

13.  Requirement based Suite : click action menu , click new suite and click Requirement based suite.

14.   Check the parameters available there, make change as per your project if needed. You can add new clause(parameter )if needed. Click RUN Query button , then you see the set of requirements.

15.   Select the requirement for which you want to create test suite and click Create Suite.

16.   It automatically displays the existing test cases related to the requirement. You can also create new test case. This way you can create Requirement based suite.

17.  Query based Suite : click action menu , click new suite and click query based suite.

18.   Check the parameters available there, make change as per your project if needed. You can add new clause(parameter )if needed. Click RUN Query button , then you see the set of test cases based on the conditions/clause.

19.   Select the number of test cases you need and click Create Suite.

20.   It displays the test cases you have selected. This way you can create Query based suite. You can edit this suite also by clicking Edit query.

21.  Adding Configurations: To assign configuration to any test suites , click action menu next to the test suite , click Assign Configuraiton.

22.   The configuration is a tab on the left hand side of Azure portal where you can see other components like pipelines, Artifacts etc. In configuration , you configure the environment or browser or platform etc. When you click step 21, you get the configurations present in here.

23.   Now, you pick the configuration . Then all the test cases in the suite adopt the configuration/s selected . which will be visible under configuration tab inside EXECUTE tab. That means the respective test cases, displayed in execute tab, will run on those respective configuration.

24. Common/Shared steps in Test Case : Some steps are common to more than one test cases. To declare the common steps, click on the bar BOARD(The Borad is a tab on the left hand side of Azure portal where you can see other components like pipelines, Artifacts etc.). Then click on Work Items , test cases are displayed. Click the related TC. Test steps are displayed. Selects the common steps and click on icon “create shared steps”. Give name to the shared steps. You can create new test case in work item. Let’s use the shared step. While writing the TC step, click on the icon “insert shared steps”  , click RUN QUERY button. Shared steps is displayed. Select it and click “insert shared steps”. It is inserted. To see steps inside the shared steps, double click on it. Now continue writing other steps with expected results. SAVE it, a new test case with shared steps is created.

24.      On the main dashboard if you click on “Work items”, you can see your shared steps also.

25.      Parameterization: You can create parameterized test case. To parametarize values, click on Test Plan, click on Parameters. Click + icon to add parameters. Give column names , each column name is one parameter. Give values to the respective parameters/columns. Save the parameters clicking icon next to +. In the test case steps you mention the parameterized values with @columnName. As soon as you complete the steps , you see a new table created in which you can see the parameters and you can map from here. After mapping click Save and Close. When executed , you get different sets of test execution based on the input of the parameterized values.

26.      Grid View(To view and to import test case from excel) : Grid view shows test case in excel format. It has ID, Title, Step Action, Step Expected Result, State and Assigned To.  This GRID option is to import test cases from excel. But you do not directly import. You create test cases in the excel in the format of Azure , ie, with 7 columns. Then copy the test case from excel and paste in Azure Grid. Then save it.

27.   Result Analysis: To analyze test result, specially failed test case, go to particular test case. Double click, opens the test case in new window. Double click again. Now, you see the detail of the test case in a new window where you can expand the data and analyze them.

Azure Repo is Azure Repository where you store , commit, pull , push and manage your code. Azure Repo maintains version control of your code , means, you can track every changes in your code , time and who did the change . It is like GitHub. And both GitHub and Azure are microsoft cloud services.

You can branch the master code (master branch and feature branch)and different team members can work on their individual branch . After they are done , they merge their code to the master branch. You are provided with tag feature to manage the version control.

Git is distributed version control system(There is local and remote repositories) like SVN where each user has their local repository and there is a central repository. TFS , Team Foundation Server- Azure DevOps server was previously called TFS, is centralized version control system. There is only one local repository , every time you update your code, you have to push to the central repository.

Azure Boards: it is a platforms which keeps track of all the activities in Azure. Activites such as dealing with tasks or issues or deployments, tracking of sprints etc.It combines all the Azure services together ie pipelines, artifacts, repos, test plan. 

Azure artifacts : This keep track of all the Azure-Devops SDLC artifacts such as approval, pending, closed etc. 

In progress....