Patent ID: 7526498

Claim:
A method of generating a data structure for use with a graphical user interface (GUI) test tool, said GUI test tool exercising a plurality of different GUI application objects using data structured according to said data structure to test a software application interfaced with said GUI test tool through said GUI, said method comprising: opening a spreadsheet file; defining a GUI environment part of the data structure in said spreadsheet file for said plurality of different application objects; defining a plurality of rows in a parameters part of said data structure in said spreadsheet file, each row containing a plurality of columns and each row defining a single test, suitable for use with an automatic test engine, of a given one of the GUI application objects and each column representing a parameter of the given GUI application object; combining said GUI environment part and said parameters part to generate said data structure, wherein the data structure is used with the automatic test engine that includes at least one GUI environment-independent component having application object dependent variables that are defined by the data structure such that each said at least one GUI environment-independent component is capable of being operative in testing said plurality of different GUI application objects based on a common test script executed by the automatic test engine; and storing a parameter file in a comma delimited file structured by said data structure, said parameter file being stored in storage for testing said plurality of different GUI application objects by the automatic test engine.