BANGALORE, INDIA: Automation refers to the removal of human interaction with a process and placing it under machine or program control.

Simply put, what is meant by "Automated Software Testing" is automating the manual testing process currently in use (though the approach may differ as the machine's full potential has to be harnessed).

However, Test Automation as a solution in compensating the difficulties of manual testing has exposed itself to some more problems. Manual testing has been replaced with Automation to reap the benefits of repeatability, reusability and reliability. But apart from providing benefits, Test Automation also poses certain roadblocks or challenges in terms of Maintainability and Efficiency.

Lack of test case management threatens software quality

Some of  the challenges or problems often encountered in a test automation process are Rework in terms of creation of the same functions or scripts for the tasks that are common across all applications every time decreases the efficiency of testing process, Maintenance is complex and difficult in the current Organization of test assets, Improper administration of changes to the test assets often leads to chaos and confusions, Scripts dependency on application data requires scripts to be changed often when the test data changes, Non compliance to best practices in creation, design and organization of test assets .

A Test Automation Framework is a set of assumptions, concepts, and practices that provide support for automated software testing.  The framework is designed to improve the level of reuse and automation in test cases and test environments. It is based on the concept of reusable services that can be used to automate major activities in the testing process.

Framework defines the organization's way of doing things – a Single Standard.

The goal of Software Test Automation Framework is to provide a complete end-to-end automation solution for testers. The main advantage of such a framework is the low cost for maintenance.

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"We, at Qualitree Solutions have developed our own "Automation Framework" to solve the problems and meet the challenges of current automation process," says Prabhu Annadurai, general manager for technology, Qualitree.

He added, "To give a brief idea about the way it works, Test assets are classified and each test asset class is designated a folder in this Framework. Hence all files pertaining to an asset are organized in the corresponding folder structure of the Framework.  For example all reusable scripts are stored in "Reusable Scripts" folder under the corresponding project folder."

Further he adds, "The resources (test data, object repositories) required by a test script for its execution are maintained in a separate external file (.XLS or .txt) and kept under the respective test asset folder. This makes the scripts independent and changes to those resources don't require script to be changed."

This structure employed by the framework is tool and application independent. So for any application to test with any tool, the structure remains same and uniform making it convenient for a tester in maintaining his/her test assets properly.

Changes to any of the test assets will undergo a disciplined and structured process and only people with sufficient access privileges are allowed to do it.