STAF stands for "Software Testing Automation Framework. As its name indicates, STAF is an automation framework. It is intended to make it easier to create and manage automated testcases and test environments. STAF externalizes its capabilities through services. A service provides a focused set of functionality, such as, Logging, Process Invocation, etc. STAFProc is the process that runs on a machine, called a STAF Client, which accepts requests and routes them to the appropriate service.

You can interact with STAF from many languages (Java, C, C++, Python, Perl, Tcl, Rexx) and from the command line/shell prompt. See the "API Reference" and "Commands" sections in the STAF User's Guide for more information. See similar questions...

STAF provides its own installation program which uses InstallShield Multi-Platform for supported platforms. On Unix platforms, we also provide a shell script-based installation mechanism. See the Installation section in the STAF User's Guide for detailed instructions on how to install STAF. You can find which platforms are supported on InstallShield Multi-Platform at http://www.installshield.com/imp/info/specifications.asp See similar questions...

STAF is configured through a text file called the STAF Configuration File. This file may have any name you desire, but the default is STAF.cfg. The STAF configuration File is read and processed line by line. The various configuration options are described in the Configuration section in the STAF User's Guide. See similar questions...

If you need support for another operating system, open a feature request on the STAF SourceForge web site. See similar questions...

Go to the STAF Mailing Lists web page and click on Subscribe or Unsubscribe for the STAF mailing list that you want to be added to or removed from. See similar questions...

STAF is designed to put as few dependencies on the underlying system as possible. To that end we designed STAF to consume as little memory, disk, and CPU as possible. Some of these items (particularly disk space) aren't nearly as important as they were several years ago. However, almost every new group that picks up STAF asks this very same question, "How much <room> does STAF require?". See similar questions...

a general rule, STAF takes up very little system resources. A typical STAF installation is about 10-30 MB (depending on whether you use the installer with the integrated JVM). STAF's in-memory size (without any additional external services) is about 2.5-5 MB (depending on the platform). On an idle STAF system (i.e., one in which there are no requests currently being handled by STAF) STAF consumes 0% CPU on a Windows system and a VERY limited amount on unix systems. See similar questions...

To override the default location where STAF is installed during a silent installation, you can specify the following option: C:\temp>STAF300-setup-win32 -silent -W stafinstalldirectory.defaultInstallLocation="C:\tools\staf" See similar questions...

Create a file in the /etc/init.d directory called something like "startSTAF". Note that the file should not end in .sh or anything else. Edit your file with your favorite text editor prompt> vi /etc/init.d/startStaf the file should look like the following: #!/usr/bin/sh PATH=/usr/local/staf/bin:/jdk1.3.1/bin:$PATH; export PATH CLASSPATH=/usr/local/staf/lib/JSTAF. See similar questions...

On Windows, when the machine fails and/or is rebooted, STAF is unavailable for remote commands until a user logs in and starts it. As an solution, you can configure the STAF process as a Windows service that will run automatically when the machine boots. These instructions assume you have copied INSTSRV.EXE and SVRANY.EXE (available from the Windows Resource Kit) into C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 and you have users connecting through Remote Desktop Client. These instructions are for Windows 2000 and later. See similar questions...

If you are having problems getting two STAF machines to communicate, try the following steps on each machine: If the ping does not work (in either direction), then you need to update the DNS settings so that the machines can communicate. From the "Start" menu, select "Network and Dialup Connections" and then select "Local Area Connection" Next, click on "Advanced" and make sure that the field for "DNS suffix for this connection:" shows the correct domain name (such as "austin.ibm. See similar questions...

you will see more STAFProc processes (typically 10 or more) on Linux than on other platforms (which there's only one). This is because the Linux base operating system doesn't really have threads. Threads are simulated on Linux using processes, so each thread shows up as a process. See similar questions...

The requests submitted to STAF and the results received from STAF are all strings. These strings may contain any arbitrary set of characters, including the NULL (i.e., 0) character. When working in an environment with a heterogeneous set of codepages, STAF will translate the request and result strings from and to the necessary codepages. This ensures that the request and result strings are not misinterpreted by the receiver. See similar questions...

Below is an example of the lines needed in /etc/profile when using the STAF tar.gz installation. See similar questions...

On Windows, when a machine is booted up, STAF is unavailable until a user logs in and starts it. To have STAF start automatically when a Windows machine is booted up without a user having to login to the machine, you can start STAFProc as a scheduled task. This works for Windows 2000 or later. This is an alternative to configuring STAFProc as a Windows service (as described above). This is especially good for Windows 2003 64-bit machines which do not support srvany. See similar questions...

You can't use the command line redirection symbols, such as '>', with STAF. They won't work. However, STAF's PROCESS service provides several redirection options, namely STDIN, STDOUT, STDOUTAPPEND, STDERR, and STDERRAPPEND, depending on what (and how) you want to redirect. For example, to start shell script tc3.sh and redirect its standard output to /tmp/tc3.out: STAF local PROCESS START COMMAND tc3.sh STDOUT /tmp/tc3.out See similar questions...

Use HANDLE logs instead of GLOBAL logs. With HANDLE logs each application will get a physically separate log file. HANDLE logs keep separate logs for each process even if the processes are using the same log names. The downside to HANDLE logs is you need to remember the handles you were using, so that you can query them. See similar questions...

This is the expected format for STAF logs (they are binary files, not text files). As a general rule you should use the LOG service itself to look at the logs. For example: STAF local log query global logname stresstst You can redirect that to another file, which will be in text format, if you want. You can also use the FmtLog utility (shipped with STAF) which will read a log file and format and write the data to an output file in a readable format. Yes. Version 2. See similar questions...

The STAF variables have to be resolved using either the VAR service through a <stafcmd> or using the STAXUtilImportSTAFVars function from the STAXUtil.xml file (provided with the STAX download in the library subdirectory of the STAX installroot). Example 4. See similar questions...