Understand your Test Results

During the Pipeline execution, a number of metrics are captured and compared to either the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) defined by the business owner, or standards set by Adobe Managed Services.

These are reported using the three-tier gating system as defined in this section.

Three-Tier Gates while Running a Pipeline

There are three gates in the pipeline:

• Code Quality
• Performance Testing
• Security Testing

For each of these gates, there is a three-tier structure for issues identified by the gate.

• Critical - These are issues identified by the gate which cause an immediate failure of the pipeline.
• Important - These are issues identified by the gate which cause the pipeline to enter a paused state. A deployment manager, project manager, or business owner can either override the issues, in which case the pipeline proceeds, or they can accept the issues, in which case the pipeline stops with a failure.
• Info - These are issues identified by the gate which are provided purely for informational purposes and have no impact on the pipeline execution.

Code Quality Testing

This step evaluates the quality of your application code. It is the core objective of a Code-Quality only pipeline and is executed immediately following the build step in all non-production and production pipelines. Refer to Configuring your CI-CD Pipeline to learn more about different types of pipelines.

Understanding Code Quality Testing

In Code Quality Testing, the source code is scanned to ensure that it meets certain quality criteria. Currently, this is implemented by a combination of SonarQube and content package-level examination using OakPAL. There are over 100 rules combining generic Java rules and AEM-specific rules. Some of the AEM-specific rules are created based on best practices from AEM Engineering and are referred to as Custom Code Quality Rules.

The results of this step is delivered as Rating. The table below summarizes the ratings for various test criteria:

Name	Definition	Category	Failure Threshold
Security Rating	A = 0 Vulnerability B = at least 1 Minor Vulnerability C = at least 1 Major Vulnerability D = at least 1 Critical Vulnerability E = at least 1 Blocker Vulnerability	Critical	< B
Reliability Rating	A = 0 Bug B = at least 1 Minor Bug C = at least 1 Major Bug D = at least 1 Critical Bug E = at least 1 Blocker Bug	Important	< C
Maintainability Rating	Outstanding remediation cost for code smells is: <=5% of the time that has already gone into the application, the rating is A between 6 to 10% the rating is a B between 11 to 20% the rating is a C between 21 to 50% the rating is a D anything over 50% is an E	Important	< A
Coverage	A mix of unit test line coverage and condition coverage using this formula: Coverage = (CT + CF + LC)/(2*B + EL) where: CT = conditions that have been evaluated to ‘true’ at least once while running unit tests CF = conditions that have been evaluated to ‘false’ at least once while running unit tests LC = covered lines = lines_to_cover - uncovered_lines B = total number of conditions EL = total number of executable lines (lines_to_cover)	Important	< 50%
Skipped Unit Tests	Number of skipped unit tests.	Info	> 1
Open Issues	Overall issue types - Vulnerabilities, Bugs, and Code Smells	Info	> 0
Duplicated Lines	Number of lines involved in duplicated blocks. For a block of code to be considered as duplicated: Non-Java projects: There should be at least 100 successive and duplicated tokens. Those tokens should be spread at least on: 30 lines of code for COBOL 20 lines of code for ABAP 10 lines of code for other languages Java projects: There should be at least 10 successive and duplicated statements whatever the number of tokens and lines. Differences in indentation as well as in string literals are ignored while detecting duplications.	Info	> 1%
Cloud Service Compatibility	Number of identified Cloud Service Compatibility issues.	Info	> 0

Dealing with False Positives

The quality scanning process is not perfect and will sometimes incorrectly identify issues which are not actually problematic. This is referred to as a “false positive”.

In these cases, the source code can be annotated with the standard Java @SuppressWarnings annotation specifying the rule ID as the annotation attribute. For example, one common problem is that the SonarQube rule to detect hardcoded passwords can be aggressive about how a hardcoded password is identified.

To look at a specific example, this code would be fairly common in an AEM project which has code to connect to some external service:

@Property(label = "Service Password")
private static final String PROP_SERVICE_PASSWORD = "password";

SonarQube will then raise a Blocker Vulnerability. After reviewing the code, you identify that this is not a vulnerability and can annotate this with the appropriate rule id.

@SuppressWarnings("squid:S2068")
@Property(label = "Service Password")
private static final String PROP_SERVICE_PASSWORD = "password";

However, on the other hand, if the code was actually this:

@Property(label = "Service Password", value = "mysecretpassword")
private static final String PROP_SERVICE_PASSWORD = "password";

Then the correct solution is to remove the hardcoded password.

Security Testing

Cloud Manager runs the existing AEM Security Heath Checks on stage following the deployment and reports the status through the UI. The results are aggregated from all AEM instances in the environment.

If any of the Instances report a failure for a given health check, the entire Environment fails that health check. As with Code Quality and Performance Testing, these health checks are organized into categories and reported using the three-tier gating system. The only distinction is that there is no threshold in the case of security testing. All the health checks are simply pass or fail.

The following table lists the current checks:

Name	Health Check Implementation	Category
Deserialization firewall Attach API Readiness is in an acceptable state	Deserialization Firewall Attach API Readiness	Critical
Deserialization firewall is functional	Deserialization Firewall Functional	Critical
Deserialization firewall is loaded	Deserialization Firewall Loaded	Critical
AuthorizableNodeName implementation does not expose authorizable ID in the node name/path.	Authorizable Node Name Generation	Critical
Default passwords have been changed	Default Login Accounts	Critical
Sling default GET servlet is protected from DOS attacks.	Sling Get Servlet	Critical
The Sling Java Script Handler is configured appropriately	Sling Java Script Handler	Critical
The Sling JSP Script Handler is configured appropriately	Sling JSP Script Handler	Critical
SSL is configured correctly	SSL Configuration	Critical
No obviously insecure user profile policies found	User Profile Default Access	Critical
The Sling Referrer Filter is configured in order to prevent CSRF attacks	Sling Referrer Filter	Important
The Adobe Granite HTML Library Manager is configured appropriately	CQ HTML Library Manager Config	Important
CRXDE Support bundle is disabled	CRXDE Support	Important
Sling DavEx bundle and servlet are disabled	DavEx Health Check	Important
Sample content is not installed	Example Content Packages	Important
Both the WCM Request Filter and the WCM Debug Filter are disabled	WCM Filters Configuration	Important
Sling WebDAV bundle and servlet are configured appropriately	WebDAV Health Check	Important
The web server is configured to prevent clickjacking	Web Server Configuration	Important
Replication is not using the ‘admin’ user	Replication and Transport Users	Info

Performance Testing

Performance testing in Cloud Manager is implemented using a 30 minute test.

During pipeline setup, the deployment manager can decide how much traffic to direct to each bucket.

You can learn more about bucket controls, from Configure your CI/CD Pipeline.

The following table summarizes the performance test matrix using the three-tier gating system:

Metric	Category	Failure Threshold
Page Request Error Rate %	Critical	>= 2%
CPU Utilization Rate	Critical	>= 80%
Disk IO Wait Time	Critical	>= 50%
95 Percentile Response Time	Important	>= Program-level KPI
Peak Response Time	Important	>= 18 seconds
Page Views Per Minute	Important	< Program-level KPI
Disk Bandwidth Utilization	Important	>= 90%
Network Bandwidth Utilization	Important	>= 90%
Requests Per Minute	Info	>= 6000

Performance Testing Results Graphs

New graphs and download options have been added to the Performance Test Results dialog.

When you open the Performance Test dialog, the metric panels can be expanded to display a graph, provide a link to a download, or both.

For Cloud Manager Release 2018.7.0, this functionality is available for the following metrics:

• CPU Utilization

  • A graph of CPU Utilization during the test period.

• Disk I/O Wait Time

  • A graph of Disk I/O Wait Time during the test period.

• Page Error Rate

  • A graph of page errors per minute during the test period.
  • A CSV file listing pages which have produced an error during the test.

• Disk Bandwidth Utilization

  • A graph of Disk Bandwidth Utilization during the test period.

• Network Bandwidth Utilization

  • A graph of Network Bandwidth Utilization during the test period.

• Peak Response Time

  • A graph of peak response time per minute during the test period.

• 95th Percentile Response Time

  • A graph of 95th percentile response time per minute during the test period.
  • A CSV file listing pages whose 95th percentile response time has exceeded the defined KPI.

The following images display the performance test graphs: