Improvement And Implementation Of Software Test Automation Framework Based On STAF

The full name of STAF is Software Test Automation Framework. It is from IBM and it is an Open Source automated test framework that supports multi-platform and multi-language. It is designed around the idea of reusable components and by using sevice invoking to help software testers eliminate the complex processes of the automated test framework creation. STAF provides the communication servers between different machines and different operation systems. It makes the software testers can focus more energy on the implementation of the test framework.This paper summarizes the existing software automated test technology, combined with the characteristics of the application under test and its automated test requirements, bases on the STAF, improves and expands it to design and implement two new automated software test frameworks that support multi-platform software test.The first test framework combines STAF test framework XML file and Perl script to implement a script-driven multi-platform supporting software test automation framework. In this framework STAF is the base framework to provide a the communication servers between different test machines, XML file is the configuration file to save all the configuration information in the test, Perl script is the operation engine to deploy and execute the test cases on all test platforms. The prominent feature of this test framework is that the test cases are independent from the test framework. Make a new test case available only need to configure it in the configuration file.The second test framework combines STAF test framework and Rational Robot automated test tool to implement a multi-platform GUI (Graphic User Interface) test supporting software test automation framework. The design inspirer of this framework is from the first framework and this test framework supply the lack of the first framework that can not easily support the GUI automated test.Finally, the paper compares the new software test automation frameworks with the traditional manual test by implement the test to prove that the new software test automation frameworks can effectively improve the test efficiency and make the test process become simpler more flexible and easier management.