How We Test Software at Microsoft®

Chapter 10. Test Automation

Alan Page

I have been writing automation for nearly 20 years. Of course, I haven’t been writing automated tests nearly that long; rather, I have used repeatable scripts or code either to make a redundant task more efficient or to reduce the chance of error when doing some computer operation. In my early days of using a computer, I used batch files (a script containing sequences of commands for the command interpreter) to back up my files to floppy disks or to reconfigure my environment for a particular application. I have continued to use batch files for configuring command-line environments for different build systems, but I automate in other ways as well. I write and use automated scripts to install applications, set ...