Automation testing tool for BI Reports

Question

I currently have a task to test BI reports. Is there is any automation tool to test BI Reports(Business Intelligence Reports)? Also what are the key factors needed to validate BI reports.

Answer 1

BI VALIDATOR:

BI Validator is the most comprehensive Regression, Performance and Stress Testing tool for Business Intelligence applications built using OBIEE, Cognos or Business Objects. It is built on our patented Patented ELV Architecture. Its easy to use Test Plans empower Business Analysts, Testers and Developers to quickly create and execute tests in a matter of minutes without the need to do any custom programming. By automating the BI Testing, Business Analysts, Testers and Developers can now focus on delivering more content in a shorter time with a higher degree of confidence.

The tool can help detect defects prior to production and can drastically reduce the costs associated with BI projects using OBIEE, Cognos and Business Objects. BI Validator eliminates the need for custom programming and/or manual eyeballing of dashboards and reports. By automating the BI regression and performance testing, Business Analysts, Testers and Developers can now focus on delivering more content in a shorter time with a higher degree of confidence.

Key Features:

1. Given the shortage of resources, how to automate the regression and performance testing?
2. How to simulate concurrent user load for stress testing of BI Applications built using OBIEE, Cognos and Business Objects?
3. How to compare data from reports across environments?
4. How to compare data from reports pre and post upgrade?
5. How to unit test OBIEE subject areas?
6. How to validate the entire dataset from a report and not just the first few rows?
7. How to increase my dashboard and report test coverage?
8. How to automate and reduce the BI testing costs?
9. How to identify the dashboards and reports that are impacted by a recent change change in the model?

You may download this tool from here: http://datagaps.com/bi-validator-download/viewcategory/4

Answer 2

It depends

If you're testing Tableau and you're after a commercial solution, have a look at Kinesis CI. I haven't personally used the tool but I've seen teams in my organisation use it for their reports (though they eventually moved on from it to building their own Selenium framework).

If you're testing Power BI, you don't have a lot of options that I'm aware of even now, years after this question was asked. You could do it using Selenium, but it can be tricky and a little overkill if you're not all that interested in the look and feel of the reports and are more interested in whether or not the report displays what you expect it to display.

You could give PowerTester a go, which is the tool I built to test Power BI reports without needing to setup and maintain a Selenium framework. The aim behind the tool is to be simple to use, fast, and only requiring SQL skills, which most teams working on developing data warehouses and BI reports usually posses.

Answer 3

No for a general "bi test tool".

However there are ways to achieve testing.

It depends firstly in what framweork or application they are developed in. There are a lot of Business Intelligence vendors and each does thing in a different way. Your best best may be a feature of the tool you are using or an available plugin or extension.

If your tool can do output to the web (pretty common these days) they you could use standard web UI automation tools aginst the web page, asserting expected results for a given data set and conditions that you create and can them access via a web page.

The most simple, UI based tools include seleniumIDE and ghostInspector (paid but has free version).

Formal programmatic solutions mostly focus around selenium by using the WebDriver protocol and then languages like c#, ruby and python and test frameworks such as rspec (ruby) to write the actual test cases.