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On 12 August 2014, IBM announced the support withdrawal of Rational Robot. The name Robot goes back to the year 1999. What happened before?
The early days
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1992, January 31: The United States Patent and Trademark Office marks this day of the first use in commerce, under the name SQA Robot.
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1995, November 14: SQA, Inc. files a US federal trademark for SQA Robot as part of the SQA Suite in Woburn Massachusetts (MA) 01801.
- 1997, February 26: Rational Software Corp. acquires SQA, Inc.
SQA Robot is part of SQA TeamTest . This bundle consists of SQA Robot and SQA Tester.
As the years go passing by
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1999, February: the first release under the name of Rational Robot v.7.1 comes out.
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2002: Robot wins the Yphise award for the best functional testing tool.
Yphise is a leading independent analyst company from Paris, France. Yphise assessed Robot through Yphise's ISO-9001-certified methodology.
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2003, February: IBM acquisition of Rational Software.
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The name changes from Rational Robot to IBM Rational Robot.
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2004 Robot development moves from Lexington MA to Bangalore, India. From that time until today, Hari Ananth has been the core developer.
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2014, August 12: IBM announces withdrawal from marketing and withdrawal from support.
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2014, November 11: IBM withdraws Robot from marketing.
Now the plan is to sunset Rational Robot on 30 April 2016. If you still use Rational Robot, you might like my story Rational Robot end of life: fair early warning?
New functions, new opportunities
Since version 2002.05.00, Rational added a function SQAVpGetCurrentActualFileName in IBM Rational Robot 7.0.0.1 Fix Pack. That came out 18 December 2006. See for more information the following white paper: How to manipulate the verification point's actual.
IBM Rational Robot Version 7.0.3.4 introduced the OpenComparator function in stand-alone mode. This version also introduced support for 64-bit operating system and made the step into the 64-bit world possible after the end of life of Windows XP. See The rebirth of Rational Robot after XP's death
Thanks to Hari, this was all possible.
Robot and her husbands
In the days before Rational Software renamed SQA Robot to Rational Robot, SQA Manager was the tool to organize Robot scripts. After that, Rational Software renamed to Rational Robot and Rational TestManager.
Release 7.0.0.1 was the first release where you could work in stand-alone mode, freed from Rational TestManager. Only for performance testing, you need to integrate with TestManager.
From 6 June 2006 until 30 April 2013, the integration with Rational ClearQuest Test Manager (CQTM) was supported. The newest tool IBM Rational Quality Manager has integrated with Rational Robot since 19 December 2008.
Integrations: Robot does its share
Somewhere in 2005, Rational Robot could act as the so-called robotic monitor for a Tivoli monitoring tool: Integration with Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance (TMTP). In this Tivoli integration, Rational Robot checks the availability or performance of an online application by running test scripts. Now the Tivoli product name is: IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions (ITCAM fT).
End of the road
I hope you've got an impression how Robot developed in the 22 years of its life. If you'd like to discuss this further or add information, leave a comment here or connect with me on Twitter @GunangWaney.
Consciously or unconsciously, we see history lightly in the form of a conflict between the old and the new. - Johan Huizinga.
