Choosing The Right Test Automation Framework For Banking Applications

By Author: TomWade
Total Articles: 34
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A Test Automation Framework is a set of guidelines or standards which help to produce beneficiary outcomes while test automation. The benefits can be increased code reuse, reduced maintenance cost, higher portability, etc. It is to be noted that they are just guidelines and not mandatory rules. However, following these rules gain certain advantages in the long run.
There are various types of Automation frameworks which are available. They are:
- Module Based Testing Framework: This is based on the concept of ‘Abstraction’. It reduces the entire AUT functions into their atomic forms, each having a dedicated test script. All these test scripts taken together build a larger test script representing a larger module. These modules are separated in such way that changes made in one section do not affect the other section.
- Library Architecture Testing Framework: It can be considered as an extension of module based testing framework. Here, the functions of the AUT are segregated into common functions and a common library is created for them. These libraries can then be called for test scripts whenever required. ...
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Data-Driven Testing Framework: In both the above frameworks, test data is lodged in the test scripts, thus changes in the test data require changes in the test script as well. But for testing an application, we need to test a functionality, multiple times with different sets of input data. Data driven testing helps to segregate the test script logic and the test data storing it in an external database. These data sets can be used to populate the data within the test scripts.
Keyword-Driven or Table-Driven Testing Framework: It is an extension of the data driven testing as it segregates test data from test scripts. Additionally, it also segregates the certain set of codes, known as keywords, in the test script into an external data file. These keywords serve as guides as to what action needs to be performed on the application.
Behavior Driven Testing Framework: This framework allows the automation of functional validations in an easily perceivable format for the developers and testers. Such frameworks do not need the user to be acquainted with programming language.
Hybrid test Automation Framework: As suggested by its name, it is a combination of more than one testing frameworks. This helps to leverage the benefits of all the frameworks.
For financial applications, the process of test automation can be mainly planned as follows:
- Model all the system interactions.
- Break large functions into smaller ones
- Identify the input data
- Group together common test cases in a library and reused when required.
The above plan calls for modular, library, data-driven and keyword driven frameworks. Hence a hybrid testing framework can be selected for leveraging the benefits of each in automated testing of the banking application Also, Open source automation software has emerged over the years as an adaptable and robust solution which can be extended as per project specifications. Considerations can be made in this regard as well after a thorough cost-benefit analysis.
Conclusion
While there are many advantages of test automation frameworks , the most valuable of them are ease of scripting, scalability, modularity, process definition, low maintenance and reusability. Ideally more than one frameworks need to be implemented in order to maximize the benefits. This does not imply applying all frameworks on all modules. It is more about choosing the ideal framework as per requirement and applying it to that module.