SilkTest Question:

Automation Framework is a discipline and should have proper design/architecture. You can understand and implement. Automation Framework should have some of following things.
1. AUT Specific libraries
2. Tool wrapper function libraries.
3. Execution Engine (Script Execution should be drived based on given test data) - Data Driven
4. Results reporting mechanisms (PASS & FAIL for each testcases/procedures and compiled results for all. It would be better, if it captured AUT's snapshots) 5. Planning for long term automation.
6. Keeping GUI objects info/declarations dynamically or static.
7. Planned approach of unattended execution.

Also framework design differs by tool, scripting languages and type of AUT etc,. Now a days, people are using PERL, PYTHON, TCL/TK for CLI automation. This design will vary much from GUI specific tool automation's design (QTP, Winrunner, Silktest,Robot and QARun etc).
You can go through following links. Each link is giving different set of components for Automation framework.
Totally Data-Driven Automated Testing http://GlobalGuideline.com/
Test Automation Frameworks http://GlobalGuideline.com/view.php?ID=601