Files and Directories Of TOSCA

Hie......

When installation is done, most of the times we are curious to learn how to use the tool, but I am glad that you have landed on this post to first of all understand the Files and Directory structure of TOSCA and it is really important to understand it.

A good understanding of TOSCA's Files and Directory structure will not only allow you to understand that what components are actually responsible for the things that you are able to do with this tool, but also will enable you to do a lot of things with TOSCA, like customization of its native behavior, adding your own functionality to TOSCA etc.

Though, I know it is not much interesting, but for the sake of completion of this tutorial, I am going to mention a brief and compact description of the important Files and Directories of TOSCA.

Every windows user needs to have unlimited access rights on the following directories to be able to work with TOSCA: %TOSCA_PROJECTS%  and %TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA% which are by default set at the time of TOSCA installation.

There are 4 environment variables that are automatically set at the time of TOSCA installation, they are as shown below:-

Environment Variable	Example for Windows 7 (64-bit)
%TRICENTIS_HOME%	C:\Program Files (x86)\TRICENTIS\Tosca Testsuite
%TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%	C:\Tosca_Projects
%TRICENTIS_SEARCH%	C:\Program Files (x86)\TRICENTIS\Tosca Testsuite\dll
%TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%	C:\ProgramData\TRICENTIS\Tosca Testsuite\7.0.0

Now let's discuss each environment variable, which actually pertains to the directory structure of TOSCA.

You can copy the environment variable in Windows Start -> Run dialog to see the directory path.

%TRICENTIS_HOME%:- This is the default directory for TOSCA and contains all program relevant files and it is suggested not to make changes in any of the directory. This directory provides Tosca Commander AddIns like Integration Management, Requirements Management, TestCase Design, Reporting and Test Data Management to name a few.

•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\DistributedExecution:- This directory contains two subfolders Agent and RDP which provides all the necessary configuration files required to configure Tosca's powerful distributed execution functionality. To understand more about DEX (distributed execution) setup, navigate to Tosca's Distributed Execution Setup
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\dll:- Tricentis has provided many engine definitions to serve different purposes and for all those Engines (specifically classic), the executable dll files are in this directory.
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\Automation:- This directory contains all the files necessary for using Tosca TBox especially for Automation purposes.
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\java:- Tosca is now available with TBox version of its Java Engine and all the component files of this engine are present inside this directory.
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\MiniSat and %TRICENTIS_HOME%\smus:- Tosca's Test Case Design feature allows to create relations between designed TestCases and the files required for verifying the validity and consistency of relations are available in this directory.
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\nunit and %TRICENTIS_HOME%\nunit2report:- Selenium being most commonly used open-source web automation framework is embraced by Tosca TBox now. We can execute our Selenium scripts using Tosca with the help of the files that are available inside this folder. 
•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\ocr:- Tosca's classic and TBox is having Optical Character Recognition capability to scan objects and the files that enable such capability are present in this directory.
• %TRICENTIS_HOME%\opencv:- Tricentis has recently launched AnyUI engine which is based upon image-based recognition of controls. Tosca uses OpenCV, which is a powerful open source library used for real-time applications. Required files for AnyUI engine are present in this directory. (To learn more about OpenCV navigate to Open CV Platform)
•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\Reporting:- The expected end-product from business point of view of a testing tool is powerful Reporting capability and Tosca is fully capable of doing it. Tosca uses Crystal Reports and ListAndLabel reporting platforms for creating customized and powerful reports. All the files corresponding to these platforms are available inside this directory. Note: Apart from above mentioned Reporting Capabilities, Tricentis has recently launched a very powerful and web-based Reporting Platform named as Tosca Analytics which provides us with a Risk-Based Requirement coverage w.r.t. TestCase Executions. We will talk more about Tosca Analytics in our post Power Of Tosca Analytics.
•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\Resources:- Tosca provides cross-browser and mobile automation capabilities. The extensions required to achieve this are available in Resources directory of Tricentis Home.
•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\SQL:- Tosca allows us to create different type of DB repositories like DB2, MS SQL Server, Oracle and Azure SQL Server and the commands required to achieve this are available in this folder.
•  %TRICENTIS_HOME%\CI:- DevOps is becoming the most discussed topic in the world of agile and Tosca has been adopted as the most favorite tool by the organizations to support their agile environment. All the continuous integration related configuration files are available in this section of Tricentis Home.

%TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%:- This is the default directory where all project-related data is stored. This directory contains temporary files, sample files and configuration files.

• %TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%\TOSCA_CommonRepositories:-  In a multiuser environment, common repositories are placed in this directory and we need to make sure that all the users of this common repository have access rights to this directory.
• %TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%\Tosca_Workspaces:- This is the directory where our workspaces are placed and contains many log entries which can be helpful while we are debugging for problems with TOSCA. There are two pre-defined workspaces that come with standard installation of Tosca, First Steps and Advanced Examples which contain a lot of examples to understand features of Tosca.
• %TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%\TOSCACommander:- This is the directory which contains all the settings and templates for all TOSCA Commander projects.
• %TRICENTIS_PROJECTS%\ToscaAnalytics:- This directory contains MDF file to configure Tosca Analytics.

%TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%:- This is the directory which is not removed even when you uninstall TOSCA from your machine and it contains all user-specific files, e.g., License Manager Information.

• %TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%\License:- This directory contains one .XML file named as License.xml which has all License related information like what is the port number of the server on which your license is hosted, the IP Address of the license server, the timeout interval for any license request from the client etc.
• %TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%\Settings\Dat:- All user specific configuration files for Tosca Engines e.g., ObjectMappings.dat, WinClassMappings.dat, and WizardMappings.dat are placed inside this folder.
• %TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%\Settings\XML:- This directory contains two files Settings.xml and UserDefinitions.xml which saves all the setting and user management changes that we do while working with Tosca.
• %TRICENTIS_ALLUSERS_APPDATA%\Automation:- This directory contains some predefined module definitions for AnyUI engine of Tosca.

Note:- Some of the terms used in this post can appear tough to remember as of now, but need not to worry, as we are going to progress in this tutorial we would be becoming more and more familiar with the terms and I will also try to keep on giving adequate references to the terms. Be with me!!!

This was the overview of the file and directory structure of some of the very commonly required TOSCA directories. From here, we would be moving ahead towards TOSCA's License Administration part, though it is for Admins, but it is worth taking a look at it or you can directly skip to Understanding TOSCA's Testing Methodology.