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Reference Guide
This guide provides the topics to help the API tester use the product by using the user interface, commands or scripts. This guide is intended for API testers.
Test actions
Actions are the building blocks of a test. A test consists of a series of steps and each step is an action. Actions can be defined for tests and stubs.
Performance actions
Performance related actions available when using HCL OneTest™ API and HCL OneTest Performance together.
Timed sections
When tests are run within a test the overall execution times (that is, start to finish) are recorded.

Reference Guide
This guide provides the topics to help the API tester use the product by using the user interface, commands or scripts. This guide is intended for API testers.
- HCL OneTest™ API overview
  This section provides an overview of HCL OneTest™ API, including information about projects and files, the HCL OneTest API user interface, environments, and project settings and preferences.
- Architecture School
  Use the Architecture School perspective to build a system under test by using the logical, physical, and synchronization views. You can also use this perspective to manage the schemas available in your project.
- Recording Studio
  With HCL OneTest™ API, you can record events (messages or database interactions) sent to and from the system under test. Use Recording Studio to control what parts of the system should be recorded. These parts could be specific parts of the system infrastructure or specific services using that infrastructure. You can then use the recorded events as a source of tests and other interactions with the system. In Recording Studio, you can record the traffic over a number of different transports.
- Test Factory
  The Test Factory perspective is one of the main areas in HCL OneTest™ API. You can create all the tests and the required artifacts/data to support them.
- Test Lab
  You use the Test Lab to execute test assets, repair tests, and open test assets for editing directly from this perspective. You can execute all of the tests, test suites, and stubs that are created in Test Factory.
- Results Gallery
  You use the Results Gallery perspective to view an execution summary and detailed coverage, and error reports for executed test suites and for test cases that were executed within a suite or as part of a test cycle.
- Messages
  HCL OneTest™ API can publish and subscribe to messages as part of a test. A message normally consists of two parts: a header and a body. The header usually adheres to a predefined logical construction, while the structure of the body can be more arbitrary.
- Schemas
  HCL OneTest™ API can handle many types of content. For the product to be able to interpret the variety of content types, it must associate a content format description, or schema with the content.
- Database resources, connections, and bindings
  HCL OneTest™ API can interact with any database that supports connectivity through the JDBC specification. These interactions can be used to extract or update data where necessary, and test data sets can be taken directly from database table content.
- Identity stores and SSL
  An identity store can group a collection of one or more certificates that can be used in HCL OneTest™ API to validate and authenticate connections that use SSL. After you create an identity store, you can use it to enable SSL communications in various messaging transports.
- Scripting within tests and stubs
  You can use scripts in HCL OneTest™ API that include the HCL OneTest API legacy scripting language, ECMAScript (such as JavaScript™), Chai, or any third-party scripting language that you install.
- External tools
  HCL OneTest™ API is primarily GUI-based, but you can also run or view tests, suites, and stubs outside of the HCL OneTest API.
- Test actions
  Actions are the building blocks of a test. A test consists of a series of steps and each step is an action. Actions can be defined for tests and stubs.
  - General actions
    A list of general actions available for HCL OneTest™ API.
  - Flow actions
    The flow-related actions that you can use are: action group, assert, decision, pass, fail, run test, sleep, fetch test data, lookup test data, iterate test data, iterate while, and iterate through multi-value tags.
  - Message actions
    A number of messaging-related actions are available for HCL OneTest™ API.
  - Database actions
    Working with messages is a large component of the tests that you create with HCL OneTest™ API. However, in most systems, you also interact with databases. For example, you might want to check that data was added or removed from a database correctly. Or, you might want to insert data, or run a stored procedure on a database as part of a larger test. If you have the appropriate JDBC drivers and can specify the locations of these drivers to the Library Manager, HCL OneTest API can interact with any JDBC-compliant database. After the JDBC drivers are set up, you can create a database within the Architecture School perspective, just like you do for any other infrastructure component, and can work with the database by adding actions to your tests. You can use three database actions: the SQL Command action, the SQL Query action, and the Stored Procedure action.
  - Performance actions
    Performance related actions available when using HCL OneTest™ API and HCL OneTest Performance together.
    - Timed sections
      When tests are run within a test the overall execution times (that is, start to finish) are recorded.
    - Test action support for timed sections
      The following table lists the various test steps and the support offered when using timed sections around them.
    - Configuring begin timed section actions
      The Begin Timed Section action marks the start of an individually timed section within the test.
    - End timed section actions
      The End Timed Section action marks the end of an individually timed section within the test.
  - Stub actions
    Some actions in HCL OneTest™ API are available to message-based stubs only.
- Formatting and parsing date-time patterns
  For some fields in HCL OneTest™ API, you can define patterns for date-time formatting. Pattern letters are repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation of the date-time information that they represent.
- The Add Numbers service
  The Add Numbers service, included with HCL OneTest™ API, provides a simple way to generate messages that you can observe with topology discovery or capture in Recording Studio.

Timed sections

When tests are run within a test the overall execution times (that is, start to finish) are recorded.

About this task

In addition to this overall time, it is possible to measure individual sections within the steps of the HCL OneTest™ API test. This can be done by adding markers (that is, the begin time section and end time section actions) to the test steps to create a timed section.

You can add multiple timed sections to a test, the sections can overlap, and the sections can be nested.

Notes:

Timing markers are only allowed within the Test Steps section of the test, and more than one timed section is allowed within a single test.
Timed sections are ignored in background tests.
Timed sections have no effect when the test is executed outside of the test.

The following topics describe which test actions support timed sections and how to configure Begin Timed Section and End Timed Section actions.