Working with Providers

Both Identity Panel and MIM Test have Providers, however MIM Test providers are completely distinct and unrelated to Identity Panel Providers.

One point of confusion is that MIM Test/Recovery Panel is itself an Identity Panel provider. To help separate things, Providers under MIM Test are referred to as "Systems" in the UI. The general structure is:

• Identity Panel
  • Licensing
    • MIM Test
    • Recovery
  • Providers
    • MIM Test Project (e.g. Testing)
      • AD Provider
      • SQL Provider
      • Portal Provider
    • MIM Test Project (e.g. Bulk Update)
      • AD Provider
      • Sync Provider
      • Portal Provider

In the Provider section of Identity Panel you may create on or more MIM Test Project. Each project has its own unique identifier, and is completely independent with System/Provider settings, as well as its own Cases, Fixtures, and Assertions. Configuration items created under one project are completely independent and isolated from other projects.

Within a single MIM Test Project you can define Objectives and Systems.

Objectives are just a simple list of Business requirements that can be used to pre-populate a dropdown list for association to test cases (see Designing a Test Case).

Systems (within the MIM Test Project) are where you define connection settings that will be used by fixtures and assertions in your various cases.

NOTE: Test Projects as well as system connection settings are exclusively defined in the Providers section of Identity Panel. However, all other aspects of creating and editing fixtures, assertions, and cases are defined in a separate Test and Recover section of the settings interface. In order to create cases you must have a least one MIM Test Project with at least one Provider (System) definition.

MIM Test and Recovery Panel include the same list of providers:

• AD Provider
• Portal Provider
• SQL Provider
• Delimited File Provider
• Sync Provider
• Report Provider
• Load Provider
• Lotus Provider

Each provider type defines its own connection settings (or no settings in the case of the Load Provider), and must have a name which is unique within the Project. See provider specific documentation for specific details.

Provider instances in the system section allow provision for connection settings. In addition, provider types define the scope of possible functionality within MIM Test. 

The number and kind of Fixture or Assertion types varies depending on the needs of the provider. In addition MIM Test includes the source code for all included providers, and it is possible to extend MIM Test by implementing new dlls with custom providers.

Providers also provide other add-on functionality, especially in the area of rule engine functions. For example the SQL provider allows you to use the SqlScalar method to lookup data using a SQL Query. The Load Provider has a whole array of functions for retrieving data from rows in a lookup table, and for generating randomized test data.

Setup Workflow

The AD, Portal, SQL, and Delimited file providers implement a schema scan which validates connection settings, and reads object and attribute types for populating help dropdown in the Fixture and Assertion editor UIs. Because of this the general workflow of adding providers is:

1. Create or Edit an existing MIM Test project
2. Add a provider to the project and populate connection settings
3. Run PanelTool.exe on an appropriate server in the environment
4. From the menu execute a schema scan for the given MIM Test project

Once providers have been created and saved they will be selectable from Fixtures and Assertions.