Rational Functional Tester can be integrated with Rational TestManager and Rational Quality Manager.
Rational Functional Tester is a test implementation application. On its own, it does not provide capabilities for test planning, test design, sophisticated test execution options, or in-depth results analysis. These capabilities come from a test management system that can use Rational Functional Tester as one of several possible implementation and automation tools.
Rational Quality Manager users define the manual tests in the Rational Quality Manager editor. They can identify test steps or sets of steps as keywords. These keywords are logical groupings of steps that can be reused across multiple manual tests.
The keywords are also visible within Rational Functional Tester. An automation specialist can select a keyword and can record or associate it with a Rational Functional Tester automated test. When the test is run, the keyword can be executed as an automated test. This provides limited automation specialists with the ability to automate the most high leverage test steps.
To create manual tests, define keywords, and run tests containing keywords implemented with manual steps, a Rational Quality Manager license is needed. To record automated tests as implementations of keywords, Rational Functional Tester bits and license are needed. To run a manual test with automated keywords, both Rational Quality Manager and Rational Functional Tester must be installed, as well as a Rational Functional Tester license.
Rational Functional Tester installs as a perspective into Rational Application Developer or Rational Software Architect.
For information about shell sharing with other Rational products, see the technical document at http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?&uid=swg27036168.
Rational Functional Tester can be integrated with IBM Rational Team Concert™ as well as with Rational ClearCase®.
Rational Functional Tester can integrate with source control management systems such as Rational Team Concert and Rational ClearCase to manage concurrent changes to test assets and to version test scripts changes. The Eclipse Shell (WSW), which is the Rational Functional Tester integrated development environment (IDE), assumes the use of a version control system. So, in a team environment where you want to share scripts, script templates, or object maps with others in your testing team, and prevent others from overwriting test assets, a source control management system is useful. Source control management systems also provide the benefit of storing versions of test scripts, merging scripts, and allowing branching.
For information about shell sharing with other Rational products, see the technical document at http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?&uid=swg27038243.
Yes, provided the environment is either a single tester working in a datastore, or testers who are not sharing any object maps or scripts. Rational Functional Tester can also be used without a source control system if the environment is a team of testers sharing assets in a datastore, but you might still need some specific procedures to prevent users from overwriting each other’s work.
The top level Rational Functional Tester asset managed by Rational ClearCase is a script. All helper files are automatically included during check-in, check-out, and merge operations. From the Rational Functional Tester interface, you can check-in, check-out, get the latest copy of either a script or the entire datastore, undo a check-out (which cancels changes to a script in your local view), show currently checked out scripts, compare script versions, and see the script history. Rational ClearCase functions are accessed through the Team menu available by right-clicking on a test script or project. Other functions, such as creating a branch, labeling, or checking out old versions of a script, are available directly through Rational ClearCase.
Rational TestManager runs the versions of the scripts that are in the local view. Before running suites that contain functional test scripts from Rational TestManager, you must be connected to a view and get the latest versions of all scripts that you want to run.