Choosing a Test Automation Framework

Purpose of this article to give a brief description about the automation frame work. Various types of frameworks and analysis of the frame work which is suitable for AUT.

When we talk about automation most of the guys think about Record\ Playback. This have only one advantage, you don’t need any technical knowledge about the scripting and much logical thinking but have lot of disadvantages, it is not machine independent, don’t have any facility to rerun any particular set of tests, you have to re record all the test if the application interface changes a bit.

I am talking about the scripting/descriptive programming. If you could master this method you can make wonders, your code can be ported to any machine, doesn’t matter if the GUI layout is changed, in the worst case if the screen added with new controls need very little editing in code, can easily accommodate the changes, so maintenance is easy.

Types of framework

• Test Script Modularity
• Test Library Architecture
• Data Driven Testing
• Key Word Driven or Table Driven Testing
• Hybrid Test automation

Test Script Modularity Framework

This is the most basic of all the frameworks. The basic idea behind this framework is to divide the AUT into modules, sections and functions ie to the most possible low level component. These small scripts can be combine together and make a larger tests. These frameworks give utmost modularity to the test script/codes and give a high degree of maintainability.

Test Library Architecture Framework

This framework is also same as Test script Modularity frame work. But divides AUT into procedures and functions. These common procedures and functions can be called directly from the scripts. So this frame work is also offers highest modularity and maintainability.

Data Driven Testing Framework

Data Driven testing frame work uses input parameters from a data files. Data can be accessed from ODBC connections, CSV files, excel files or formatted sequential files. Advantage of these scripts we can test the application with different types of data, actually the test case implemented in the data file not in scripts (Confusing ??????). Here we are using the same scripts but the set of inputs are varying. You can test type definitions, boundary testing, data conversions etc. If the business logic changes in between, it is easy to incorporate it into the scripts.

Key Word Driven/Table Driven Framework

IT is similar to manual test cases and this requires development of data tables and Key words. In this we can to document step by step functionality of the AUT. A sample test table is given below

This data table can be used in two ways. (1 ) It can be used to create step by step code (2) We can use a script to read this table ,test according the instruction in the table and log the result. The second method is not always a good idea.

Hybrid Automation Frame work

Most commonly used/implemented automation framework, this is a combination of all the frameworks mentioned above. It uses the strengths of all the frameworks. Data driven and Key word driven framework uses the libraries and utilities.

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