My Python Based Test Framework (PAT) (1)

After used and reviewed so many test-frameworks; now I have been working on developing my own, again. More precisely, it will be just another re-factor work and who knows how much will be left out not touched.

Well, before really dig into the details of the new framework, reviewing the ones I have used before.

1. STAF. It's really a nice and cool setup; except setting it up maybe a pain; especially that my typical test environment has different types of machines need be managed and get all machines running STAF is really a challenging work. Last time I have seen it all working successfully was actually on a small-scale setup with relative coherent machines.
2. Shell scripts. In one of my previous projects (jobs), we got a full set of shell scripts working very nicely that monitor different set of machines (DUTs ,controlling machines, and tester-machines). They are mostly Linux-ish machines; and Tcl/Expect was used to manage the login process. There are also lot of text-processing the extract the logs (test-data, logs frm DUT etc), MIBs etc to correlate the data and finding isues. The correlation part is so wonderful that it had given huge visibility since all power-point presentation were backed up by serious of data; which were extracted out from pages and pages of original logs etc.
3. Perl/Python scripts. In my last job, there was some Perl scripts that drive serious of data packets and then extract information out from the logs (yes, logs again) and captured packets to determine efficiency and effectiveness of (virus!) detection. It's an interesting setup of scripts and it was kind of tedious and I converted portion of code into Python to make the lot faster. Gosh, the Perl scirpts were so slow to send out packets but it's quite good in parsing results
4. Now, here, in my current place, we had a serious of shell-scripts (before me) done by group of genious software engineers (but without much sense of testing). Fr months, I tried to throw the wholething awaya; but I had to live with it since it does take times to develop a new onw.

And so, the journey started... my new test-framework based on Python; I called it PAT (Python Automation Test).