Depends what you're doing, I suppose, but I wouldn't want to litter my code/WTKX with automation names, or at least it should be optional.
I agree - this property should be optional. I imagine it would be added by QA teams during testing.
With Pivot the testing tool should just be able to introspect the component hierarchy to find whatever it likes anyway (I want to say XPath, but you know what I mean).
The main problem with this approach is that, if the layout changes (such that a button no longer exists at a particular "path"), your test script would break. Using automation IDs, the script would still run OK.
