Autoplus: a Generic Automation Test Framework for Testin G and Integration Challenges of Complex/multilayered Software System

Testing is an equally important and critical phase as analysis and design for successful deployment of any software. Traditional testing and integration have been manual and time consuming. Concept of automation of testing process has been around for a while and has been deployed and successfully used. But as complexity of software systems began to increase and as organizations preferred to impose more processing on software, the traditional automation was no longer sufficient. Automation Framework concept was introduced for the integration and testing of these systems and many off-the-shelf frameworks were introduced. These frameworks, however, have not been able to provide the automation solutions as they promise. More often than not, most organizations have to use these frameworks as just another tool in the plethora of tools they have purchased and also rely on internal resources to achieve the desired results. Additionally, most organizations have proprietary protocol implementations as well as in-house tools that are widely used by developers and system testers to validate the software. What we are discussing in this paper is how organizations can efficiently create an Automation Test Framework (ATF) using the combination of off-the-shelf tools, in-house tools, General Purpose License (GPL) tools and various high level scripting languages. The proposed ATF consists of a User Interface, Driver Application, Execution Engine, Unit Under Test (UUT), Verification Engine and a Reporting Engine. The case study describes the implementation of such an Automation Framework for a multi-layered multimedia delivery software system.