Recently the project I am working on involves using the E-Tester of Empirix to automate the regression test package.  Duing the project, I've encountered some problems which led me to search for the answers of the following questions. 

1. What kind of applications that should be automated?  The best candidates for automation are enterprise applications.  These applications require multiple releases throughout their life cycles. 

2. What are the often used automation test frameworks and what are the differences between them?  There are 5 main automation test framework that are adopted by the industry. 

1) Test script modularity framework

2) Test library architecture framework

3) Keyword-driven framework

4) Table-driven framework

5) Hybrid test framework

The main purpose of using these framework is to ensure the resuability, maintainability and scalability of the test scripts/test packages.

3.  Which framework should I use?  Based on the characteristics of our web application, I've decided to use the table-driven framework.  The input data are from .txt format data file.  Each script contains its own seperate data file which is called databank file in E-Tester.  This would allow every script to run independently, which satisfies the loose-couple design methodology. 

When there is a need to change some data, only the relevant data file need to be updated. 

Reference:

 "Choosing a test automation framework"

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/591.html