Release notes for Rational Integration Tester, Rational Test Virtualization Server, and Rational Performance Test Server, Version 9.1.0

Read about new features, system requirements, installation, known issues, and support for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester, IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server, IBM Rational Performance Test Server, version 9.1.0.

Contents

Description

IBM Rational Test Workbench delivers end-to-end functional, regression, load, and integration testing to address the quality challenges of highly complex and integrated applications. This offering includes the following installable components:
  • Rational Integration Tester, a scripting-free environment for developing tests for SOA messaging and business process integration projects. Tests can be built by recording existing system behaviors or from requirements, by entering the data to send and the data that is expected in return. You can also create virtual services to remove test dependencies and enable earlier testing. Virtual services can be deployed by Rational Test Virtualization Server to provide on-demand virtualized test environments that can support all phases of the test development lifecycle.
  • Rational Test Control Panel, a server-based web application that provides a central repository for virtualized services. With Rational Test Control Panel, you can use virtual services that are published by Rational Integration Tester to create, share, and deploy virtualized test environments in Rational Test Virtualization Server. It also contains technology-specific components that are used by Rational Integration Tester for recording SOA message conversations, HTTP(S) and JDBC traffic, and for monitoring middleware systems under test with minimal reconfiguration of client applications.

New features and enhancements

What's new in Version 9.1.0
  • When you upgrade the schema version of your Rational Integration Tester project results database, you must use a specific schema version. See Rational Integration Tester upgrade information and requirements.
  • In version 9.1.0 of Rational Integration Tester only Windows, Linux (x86/x86_64), and macOS are supported platforms. In future versions of Rational Integration Tester Agent only Windows and Linux (x86_64) will be supported platforms.
  • The following capabilities were removed as they were previously deprecated. If you have any concerns, contact either an IBM representative or your IBM Client Support team for this program:
    • Features that are related to native IBM BPM interaction - IBM BPM Domain, Process, My webMethods Server, TIBCO iProcess Server, IBM BPM Test Actions (Start/Retrieve/Close Case, Retrieve/Modify Task, Trigger Event).
    • Features that are related to native Network Virtualization integrations - Network Virtualization Environment Task, Shunra Network Virtualization. Testing of IBM BPM platforms and use of Network Virtualization solutions can still be achieved by using appropriate open standards where available, for example RESTful interfaces.
  • In previous versions of Rational Integration Tester, the publishing of stubs to Docker was limited to stubs by using the HTTP or WebSphere® MQ transports. Further stub transports are now supported for publishing to Docker. These transports are: JMS, MQTT, TIBCO EMS, TIBCO SmartSockets, SoftwareAG Integration Server, TCP, UDP, FIX, TIBCO RendezVous, SAP RFC, and IBM WebSphere SIBus. See Supported transports to publish stubs to Docker.
  • When you view observed resources for a proxy in Rational Test Control Panel, the date and time that each resource was last observed is shown and the data can be sorted.
  • Within a Solaris-based environment Rational Integration Tester and the corresponding runtime agent executes as 32-bit applications in a 64-bit operating environment (64-Tolerate).Rational Test Control Panel runs natively as a 64-bit application in a 64-bit operating environment (64-Exploit).
  • Rational Integration Tester z/OS® based intercept technologies are now supported on z/OS 2.1 and z/OS 2.2. See Testing applications on z/OS.
  • It is now possible to connect to IBM WebSphere Application Server version 9 and onwards using the appropriate client libraries that rely on a version 8 JRE to operate. See IBM WebSphere Application Server requirements.
  • Java™ 5 versions of the JDBC intercept and the Java agent are no longer provided. For use of these tools in a Java 5 environment, a previous installation of Rational Integration Tester must be installed.
  • Rational Test Control Panel environments can now be deleted in the UI, the Ant tasks, the command-line, and the REST API.
  • Rational Integration Tester provides synchronization support for importing Swagger or WSDL definitions from the Developer Portal of IBM API Connect™ version 5. After the import operation is completed, you can use the definitions to create tests and virtual services for the endpoints that they define. See Working with IBM API Developer Portals.
  • Rational Integration Tester and the Rational Integration Tester Agent now support configuration of IBM MQ 9.0 client libraries through Library Manager. See Testing WebSphere MQ messages.
  • The Eclipse Platform used was updated to Eclipse Neon (4.6.2). Team providers, custom integrations, and plug-ins that are used need to be updated to compatible versions.
  • A SYSTEM/BUILD_ID was added to the System tags in Rational Integration Tester. The BUILD_ID tag indicates the current build ID of the product. See The Tag Data Store.
  • The HTTP transport now supports gzip and deflate data compression algorithms for Messages when specified in the Content-Encoding and Transfer-Encoding HTTP headers. See Message headers.
  • The Data Model editor within the Tools application was replaced with the EMF Ecore editor. See Creating data models, Editing data models, and Creating data model-driven stubs.
  • To prevent possible clickjacking attacks,Rational Test Control Panel now supports the ability to include an X-Frame-Options header in responses. See Installation Considerations for Rational Test Control Panel.
  • The following capabilities are deprecated. IBM will no longer invest in enhancing these capabilities, and is planning to remove them as of the 9.1.1 program releases. If you have any concerns, contact either an IBM representative or your IBM Client Support team for this program:
    • Features that are related to native Test Data Management Systems - Optim™ Environment Task.
    • Features that are related to Data Models - Data model view in Architecture School, Data model selection in stubs, Editor capabilities in the tools application.
    • Interactions with Test Data Management systems can still be achieved by using appropriate open standards where available for example, RESTful interfaces
  • The REST API response for listing one or more stub instances now contains the identifier of the agent on which one or more stub instances are running. See Get a list of all stub instances.

System requirements

For system requirements specific to this release of Rational Test Workbench, see the system requirements document at System Requirements for Rational Test Workbench.

Installing Rational Integration Tester and Rational Test Control Panel 9.1.0

For information about the upgrade requirements, see: For instructions on installing, see:

Installing Rational Performance Test Server 9.1.0

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Performance Test Server.

Installing Rational Test Virtualization Server 9.1.0

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Performance Test Server.

Known problems

Known problems are documented in the download document for each product and in the form of individual technotes in the Support Knowledge Base:

Table 1. Download documents and technotes
Product Download document Knowledge Base
Rational Integration Tester http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24043406 http://www.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/all_troubleshooting_links/rational/rational_test_workbench?productContext=-1242920191
Rational Test Virtualization Server http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24043407 http://www.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/all_troubleshooting_links/rational/rational_test_virtualization_server?productContext=-1234805781
Rational Performance Test Server http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24043408 http://www.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/product/rational/rational_performance_test_server?productContext=-1563869467

The knowledge base is continually updated as problems are discovered and resolved. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to problems.

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

IBM Rational Software Support provides you with technical assistance.

For contact information and guidelines or reference materials that you will need when you require support, read the IBM Software Support Handbook.

For personalized support, including notifications of significant upgrades, register at http://www.ibm.com/support/mysupport/.

For Rational software product news, events, and other information, visit the IBM Rational Software Web site.

Before you contact IBM Rational Software Support, gather the background information that you will need to describe your problem. When describing a problem to an IBM software support specialist, be as specific as possible and include all relevant background information so that the specialist can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
  • What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
  • Do you have logs, traces, or messages that are related to the problem?
  • Can you reproduce the problem? If so, what steps do you take to reproduce it?
  • Is there a workaround for the problem? If so, be prepared to describe the workaround.

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