Configuring Coverage Agents for Manual Testing

In order for CTP to gather coverage information related to your manual tests, you will need to configure the components in your environment to use one of your deployed application coverage agents. This section assumes that you have already configured coverage agents for the application under test (AUT) using Parasoft dotTEST or Jtest (the recommended method), or using one of the command line coverage tools shipped with SOAtest or CTP that you can use to analyze application binaries when you don't have access to the project's source code. If you have not, please see Configuring the Application Under Test for Coverage for more information.

Connecting Coverage Agents to CTP Components

You can confirm that the components in your environment have been connected to coverage agents easily. Open the Environment Manager and edit your environment diagram. Click the Coverage Agents tab and you will see a convenient table organized by component name that includes coverage agent, build ID, and DTP project information for each, as applicable.

If you find a component that needs to be connected to a coverage agent but is not, go back to the Diagram tab to configure that connection:

1. Either create a new Component Instance for the desired component or edit an existing one. For more information, see Adding Component Instances or Modifying a Component Instance's Settings.
2. With component instances that are connected to a coverage agent, it is recommended that you include the coverage agent as part of the Name and/or Description.
3. Click Coverage and choose a Connection type:
   • Agent-initiated (WebSocket): Choose this option if you want your coverage agent to register itself with CTP. Choose your coverage agent type (Java or .NET) and you will be given properties for the ctp.websocket.url and the ctp.subscription.queue that you need to add to your agent properties file (agent.properties for Java or agent.config.json for .NET); you can copy the settings directly from here. See Application Coverage for more information about configuring coverage agents.
     
     

     If you want to edit other agent.properties or agent.config.json files without needing to come to this dialog for each component, you can reuse the settings for ctp.websocket.url and ctp.subscription.queue, just replace the environment ID and component ID with the values for the new component in the latter. You can find those values easily by clicking the component in your diagram and checking the URL field in your browser.

   • CTP-initiated (HTTPS): Choose this option if you want CTP to register the coverage agent. Enter the URL where the application under test and coverage agent are hosted in the Agent URL field, making sure to include the protocol (HTTP/HTTPS) and port number of the agent. To test the connection to the coverage agent, click Test Connection. Note that when the connection is successfully tested, the remaining settings are automatically populated with default values from the agent.
     
4. CTP will automatically use the default DTP settings provided by your coverage agent. You do not need to configure these settings unless you want to override the defaults from the coverage agent; only enter values in these fields if you want to override the coverage agent's settings. If you choose to override one or more of them, be aware of the following:
   • DTP Project: This value must match the dtp.project value set for dotTEST or Jtest when collecting the static and dynamic coverage files. Multiple components can publish to the same DTP project. CTP will generate a unique session tag for each component when publishing coverage to DTP based on the session tag provided in the REST API and the component name to ensure that coverage data from multiple components published to the same project in DTP will be merged.
   • Filter: Specify a filter for this coverage agent. Filters are provided by the DTP server and associate tests in DTP, which will help identify tests affected by a test impact analysis. The field will autocomplete as you enter text. You cannot create filters from here; if there is a filter you want that is not available, go to DTP and create it there.
   • Build ID: Set to the build ID with which to correlate coverage results. If you want to merge SOAtest coverage results with results from other types of testing—such as unit testing and manual testing of the same application—they must all use the same build ID. The build ID set here must match the build ID set for dotTEST or Jtest when collecting the static and dynamic coverage files and uploading the coverage data.
   • Coverage images: Specify a set of tags that are used to create coverage images in DTP. A coverage image is a unique identifier for aggregating coverage data from runs with the same build ID. Separate multiple entries with a semi-colon ( ; ). For details, see the Parasoft DTP user guide.
     
5. Click Finish.

Note: You will need to update these DTP settings when a new version of your application is deployed. You can do this either in this dialog or in the agent's properties file (agent.properties or agent.config.json); the settings will be updated automatically the next time the agent is started.

Coverage Agents in Multi-User Mode

If you have multiple testers working on a web application at the same time, it is recommended that you run your coverage agents in multi-user mode. When a component in an environment is configured to a coverage agent running in single-user mode, you will only be able to run one test at a time in that environment. How you run your coverage agent in multi-user mode depends on which coverage agents you're using.

• Jtest: Be sure both jtest.agent.enableMultiuserCoverage and jtest.agent.autoloadMultiuserLibs are enabled in the agent.properties file.
  • Note: When jtest.agent.enableMultiuserCoverage is enabled, jtest-otel-ext.jar and opentelemetry-javaagent.jar will be automatically loaded from the agent.jar directory. All three are included in the coverage agent download and should be deployed to the same directory when the coverage agent is installed.
• dotTEST: Be sure multiUser is enabled in the agent.config.json file.

See Application Coverage for more information about configuring coverage agents.

Regardless of which coverage agent you are using, each tester's browser needs to be set up to inject the following HTTP header (where <USER> is the tester's CTP username): 
baggage: test-operator-id=<USER>

If this header is not injected, you will not capture any coverage data. You can inject this header using a browser extension. The screenshot below shows the header injected in a Chrome browser with such an extension.

Configuring Coverage Agents to Track Impacted Manual Tests

If you want CTP to be able to report on manual tests that have been impacted by code changes, you need to configure your coverage agents with the location of your application under test so that, when changes are made to it, it will be able to determine what classes changed. How you do this depends on which coverage agents you're using.

• Jtest: Enable jtest.agent.appLocationIncludes and (if applicable) jtest.agent.appLocationExcludes in the agent.properties file and configure them appropriately. See Jtest Coverage Agent settings for more information about Jtest coverage agent parameters.
• dotTEST: Enable appLocationIncludes and (if applicable) appLocationExcludes in the agent.config.json file and configure them appropriately. See dotTEST Coverage Agent settings for more information about dotTEST coverage agent parameters.