DST_Vega Test Tool for Automation

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vegaTest®
- A Robust, technology
agnostic, Business User Friendly Test
Automation Framework
- Author
Suresh Garimella, General Manager – IT Services

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ABSTRACT
DST vegaTest®
Automation Framework is a leading-edge tool-agnostic and
business user friendly solution architected, designed and developed for
automating functional and regression testing. vegaTest®
ensures:
Tool-agnostic framework guarantees risk-proof transition to any
automation tool.
Business User and Business Analyst friendly:
o Keyword-driven approach to develop test scripts and input test
data using Microsoft® Excel
o Abstraction from tool level complexities
Cross-cutting capability ensures lesser time spent on test scripts during
Application re-engineering and modernization
Standardization of test automation across different Business Units in
the company
Higher Return on Investments resulting from reduced effort in Script
development, maintenance and porting from one automation tool to
another
Test Reports and Metrics in Multiple output formats

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KEY TAKEAWAYS
vegaTest®
Automation Framework is an innovative test automation framework.
It delivers several business benefits to DST and its customers.
TOOL AGNOSTIC
There were several projects in DST that were migrated from QTP to Selenium
for business reasons. vegaTest®
ensured:
Proven 65 - 80% reduction in automation script migration effort
Reduced tool dependency as it can be integrated with any new
functional or regression automation tool
Figure 1: Ease of converting scripts to a new tool using vegaTest®
BUSINESS USER AND BUSINESS ANALYST FRIENDLY
Test data and scripts configured using keywords in MS Excel by
Business Users and Business Analysts
Only 1,000 hours of effort were required to understand and set up
2,000 scripts, saving more than 19,000 hours of development effort.
Vibrant User Community of over 150+ users
Add-on tools further simplify the test script and test data creation

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CROSS CUTTING CAPABILITY
$40K saved by a Healthcare domain client (1800 person hours for initial
500 test scripts) during an application modernization / re-engineering
from COBOL to Java technology.
vegaTest®
ensures the re-use of test scripts generated on old
application code base.
STANDARDIZATION
Over 90% of DST adopted vegaTest®
and they internally use several
automation tools at the backend
The ownership for test Scripts development and maintenance is with
Business Users and Analysts. It ensures documentation of domain
knowledge.
SAVINGS AND RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Figure 2: Savings and RoI – vegaTest®
vs. Conventional Approach
Proven reduction of effort
o 30% reduction in Script development
o 60% reduction in Script maintenance
Over $800K licensed revenue
Savings of over $990K across several DST Business Units (@an average
of 2 hours per script X 22,000 scripts)
Over $40K saved in Application reengineering and migration projects

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TEST REPORTS AND METRICS IN MULTIPLE OUTPUT FORMATS
Extensive test reports generated for every run
Test Reports include screen shots of error
Test reports in multiple formats including: Excel, HTML, etc.

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BACKGROUND
INSTANCE 1 – KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
At the enterprise level, DST has commanded deep knowledge and
experience handling IT software products for over 40 years. Our domain
knowledge cuts across business sectors including financial services,
healthcare, insurance, retirement planning, and business process
management. However, this knowledge has not been systematically
documented and integrated for future use of our teams.
The criticality of effective knowledge management came to the fore as
DST undertook to migration, modernization and re-engineering of its
legacy applications. As re-engineering got underway, DST found it
increasingly difficult to execute complete regression testing due to lack of
adequate domain expert resources.
INSTANCE 2 – RE-ENGINEERING
A large technology vendor for the health insurance field needed an
automated testing solution to offer customers as part of their software
product package. The vendor’s customers were spending six months on
testing with each new product release, with the effort to execute one full
regression test cycle (comprised of 2,000 scripts) taking an average of
4,000 hours. As this testing was not a continuous business need for the
customers, they were not staffed to perform dedicated testing and quality
assurance on this scale. Additionally, they were using manual test
processes supported by limited automated scripts and testing tools, and
lacked the resource capacity to create test scripts and support test
activities, while still satisfying everyday business requirements.
ANALYSIS
Against this backdrop, DST delved into the issue to analyze the
challenges before the organization.

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The domain knowledge is with the Business users and Business
Analysts. It is vital to enable them to trigger the test scripts and
test data.
Converting manual test cases into automated test cases for
several clients involved engineers having domain knowledge
and Business Users having tool knowledge.
DST needed a solution to mitigate the risks and enable Business
Users, Business Analysts and Subject Matter Experts to develop the
automation scripts without having to understand the technicalities
involved in writing automation scripts.
HIGH LEVEL SOLUTION
DST vegaTest®
Automation Framework is a leading-edge framework
designed and developed for automating functional and regression testing in
system environments. vegaTest®
was developed by using industry-standard
process frameworks to provide clients with comprehensive end-to-end
automation capabilities. All while addressing, the key challenges of traditional
test automation approaches.
vegaTest®
automation framework is enriched by its comprehensive reporting
capabilities and can support multiple sets of data. It supports repeatability at
decreased costs. This results in faster time-to–market, allowing subject matter
experts to spend more time in testing complex system functionality.
Here is a high level overview of the vegaTest®
framework compared against
the traditional automation tool approach:
Business Benefit vegaTest®
Approach Traditional Approach
Resource Skills Automation engineers,
business users, manual
testers and processing
engineers
Automation Engineers

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Business Benefit vegaTest®
Approach Traditional Approach
Script
Development
Faster, Using Keywords
and vegaTest® build-in
UI
Standard, Scripting
Coding
Standards
Applied Automatically Manually
Code Review Minimum Requires additional
effort
Data Access Rational, Flexible Multiple data files
Automation Tool
Licenses
TAF saves one license in a
set of 5
No Saving
Script Portability QTP, Selenium, Silk Test Supports only one tool
New Resource
Ramp Up
In days In weeks
Table 1: Business benefits vegaTest®
Vs. Traditional Approach
INSTANCE – 3 TOOL AGNOSTIC
One of the important clients in Brokerage domain was using QTP
automation tool along with vegaTest®
Automation Framework for
automating the testing requirements of a legacy Web Application. Its
business needs demanded to move the test automation to Selenium for
the speed of test execution and multi-browser support. It required moving
approximately 200 test cases from QTP to Selenium.
ANALYSIS
The challenge before DST was to have their test cases tool agnostic.
While vegaTest®
Automation Framework was initially developed to

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work with a QTP automation tool, its robust architecture ensured
that with very minimal effort it would also work with Selenium as
the back end automation tool.
TOOL AND TECHNOLOGY AGNOSTIC CAPABILITY
A quick enhancement to the vegaTest®
Automation Framework ensured that
it is tool agnostic and compatible with:
HP-Quick Test Professional (commercial tool)
Selenium (open source tool)
Quality Center (commercial tool)
Zephyr (commercial tool)
It works seamlessly in automating test cases across technologies - Web
Applications, BPMS Applications, Mainframe Applications, Client-Server Applications and
Desktop Applications.

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ARCHITECTURE
DST undertook research on defining an automation framework that can act as a
catalyst to standardize the test automation approach across the DST Enterprise.
The product landscape of DST included several legacy applications, BPMS
applications, Web based applications, each of which were using different
automation tools. Standardizing the automation approach across all these
complexities involved developing the vegaTest®
Automation Framework to
take inputs from a tool most used by the Business Users.
At the very outset, our research revealed that the business knowledge that
resides with individuals within our organization is a critical part of our solution.
Hence, the active participation of our business users was critical to the success
of our framework. Our survey showed that the majority of DST users had been
using MS Excel for more than 25 years, so we developed the input interface
using MS Excel.
Let’s have a look into the vegaTest®
Automation Framework architecture.
Figure 3: vegaTest®
Automation Framework Architecture
vegaTest®
AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK: It is a packaged solution that provides all the
components required to build and execute scripts with several automation tools

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over multiple environments. It provides:
ability to configure multiple test data sheets
tools to perform global data edits
flexibility to share the scripts and test reports
AUTOMATION TOOLS: The current support includes automation tools like
QTP, Selenium, Quality Center and Zephyr. The internal architecture of
vegaTest®
Automation Framework makes it easy for future-guarding it
against any new automation tools or upgrades in the current tools.
DATA: The test data can be configured in excel sheets by business users. It
provides for the flexibility to configure multiple sets of data.
SCRIPTS: End-to-end application test scripts can be developed in excel
sheets by business users using keywords. A jump start of 1,000 hours of
effort was required to understand and setup 2,000 scripts, saving more
than 19,000 hours of development effort.
CONTROLLERS: Business users can configure in Excel sheets the location
from which data is picked up and the test scripts are executed.
RESULTS: The test results can be downloaded from the framework in
multiple formats including Excel, HTML and PDFs.
APPLICATIONS: vegaTest®
guarantees seamless connection with
applications developed on several technologies including Web
technologies, Mainframe, BPMS, Client-Server and desktop.

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TOOLKIT
vegaTest®
also has add-on tools that help in ready access of test objects and
controls from a repository, data consolidation from multiple excel files and
optimal utilization of test machines.
AUTO-GENERATE USER INTERFACE
The Auto-Generate User Interface (UI) tool minimizes the script
development effort by simplifying the test case creation process with a
plug-in for Microsoft® Excel that readily accesses test objects and controls
from a repository.
TEST DATA MANAGEMENT - CDF
The Composite Data File (CDF) tool manages test script data access from
multiple files. Our tool consolidates data from multiple test Microsoft®
Excel files to a single data Microsoft® Excel file. Using CDF, clients can
add, update and clean-up test data files from a single data source.
TEST LAB VIRTUALIZATION - TLO
Test Lab Optimization (TLO) is an intellectual tool that controls and
minimizes manual intervention and optimizes the utilization of test
machines.
CONCLUSION
vegaTest®
Automation Framework ensures:
Future proof and Tool-agnostic framework
Keyword driven framework for business users
Componentization and Reusable test scripts
Detailed test reports and metric
Higher return on investment

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suresh Garimella works as General Manager, IT Services at DST Worldwide
Services. With 16+ years proven track record, he is the end-responsible
and business owner for Testing COE, AWD BPM Practice and program
manager for several projects across BFSI and Healthcare domains.
Previously, he worked with TCS as Engagement Manager and Delivery
Manager. He is a B.E from R. V. College of Engineering - Bangalore,
student at XLRI, certified HP Quick Test Pro SME and Open Source -
Selenium SME, author of white paper - Estimation Models in Testing, an
avid reader, cricket player and Wii gamer.
Connect with Suresh Garimella on LinkedIn.
ABOUT DST WORLDWIDE SERVICES
DST Worldwide Services India Private Ltd is a leader in delivering world-
class information technology and back office processing solutions to the
financial services, healthcare and insurance industries. With more than
2,000 associates across the United States, India, and Thailand, we provide
application development and support, testing, data management,
migration, infrastructure management, back office and consulting services
to customers globally. DST Worldwide Services is a wholly owned
subsidiary of DST Systems Inc., which is located in Kansas City, MO.
COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE
We are committed to delivering excellence in test automation and
assurance services. Contact us today to discuss your project or to learn
more about how the DST Worldwide Services Testing CoE can become an
asset to your business.
For more information please contact one of our Client Relations Managers
at info@dstworldwideservices.com, call 1.855.809.5505, or visit our website
www.dstworldwideservices.com.

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Bibliography
DST Internal vegaTest®
Documentation
DST internal vegaTest®
presentations

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THANK YOU!