IBM Rational Performance Tester release notes for V10.0.2

This document contains information about what's new, known limitations, and problems in IBM® Rational® Performance Tester.

Contents

Description

Rational Performance Tester is a scripting-free environment for automating load and scalability testing of web, ERP, and server-based software applications. Rational Performance Tester provides rich and customizable reporting to help you identify the presence and cause of system bottlenecks. It captures the network traffic that is rendered when the application under test interacts with a server. This network traffic is then emulated on multiple virtual users while playing back the test. With Rational Performance Tester, you can test applications that use the following protocols or domains:
  • HTTP
  • SAP (GUI)
  • Citrix
  • Socket
  • TN3270
  • Service (SOA)
To scale up the load for tests without investing money in computers, you can create a schedule that runs in a cloud location. You can specify the number of agents required for a run. The cost of the cloud run is based on the number of virtual users and the number of hours.

System requirements

For information about hardware and software compatibility for Rational Performance Tester, see the http://www.ibm.com/software/reports/compatibility/clarity/softwareReqsForProduct.html.

What's new in Rational Performance Tester V10.0.2

  • You can integrate Rational Performance Tester with Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to run test scripts as part of the application development and testing cycle. With this integration support, you can use the readily available templates in the product installation directory to add the details of your test script and run them in Micro Focus ALM. See Integrating and running performance test scripts in Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management.

  • You can now publish reports instantly to Rational Test Automation Server after you run tests. After each test run, the Publish Result dialog box is displayed where you can select the URL of Rational Test Automation Server and Project name to publish test reports. To identify specific test results, you can now label each test result. See Publishing test results to the server.

  • In previous versions of the product, you created the config file manually by adding parameters to it. Now, you can create a command-line config file from Rational Performance Tester by right-clicking the test asset and configuring the required options. See Creating a command-line config file.

  • You can now replace dataset values during a test run. When you run a test by using a Jenkins, Ant, or UrbanCode Deploy (UCD) plugins, the values are substituted from the new dataset instead of the original dataset. See Testing with Jenkins, Testing with Ant, and Testing with UrbanCode Deploy.

Installing the product

For installation instructions, see Installing Rational Performance Tester or Rational Performance Tester Agent on Windows or Linux or Mac.

Note: If you have directly installed V10.0.2, you cannot roll back to the previous version of the product. If you want to use the previous version of the product, you can roll back only if you have upgraded the product from the previous version. For example, if you have upgraded the product from V10.0.0 to V10.0.2, then you can roll back to V10.0.0 only and not to V10.0.1.

Known problems

  • In Rational Performance Tester V10.0.0 and later, when you set the environment variable, JAVA_HOME, to the bundled JDK that is shipped with the product, tests that run from Jenkins show a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space error after completion of the test run.

  • If you have already upgraded the product from V10.0.0 to V10.0.1, to upgrade from V10.0.1 to V10.0.2, you must first roll back the product to V10.0.0. Optionally, you can uninstall the existing version of the product and then install V10.0.2.

  • You must install Rational Performance Tester V10.0.2 on Mac OS by using Installation Manager V1.9.1. For more information, see http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ibm11072690.

  • With V10.0.0 and later, you might expect a reduction in the number of Virtual Users (VUs) supported by IBM Rational Performance Tester Agent depending upon workload characteristics. This variation is the result of the product shipping with OpenJDK 8 with OpenJ9 instead of IBM JRE.

    OpenJDK 8 with OpenJ9 JRE exhibits a higher utilization of CPU for the workload. Up to 30% or more decrease in the supported VUs capacity may be expected for CPU-bound workloads. However, for memory-bound workloads, a much smaller, if any reduction in VUs capacity may be expected. If you need higher performance and have access to IBM JRE 8.0.5.35 or later that contains latest security fixes, you can switch from OpenJDK 8 with OpenJ9 to IBM JRE. For more information, see http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ibm10956413.

  • The other known problems are documented in the download document. Select a download document from Fix list for Rational Performance Tester and Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality.

  • Known problems are also documented in the form of individual tech notes in the Support Knowledge Base. For more information, see IBM Support.

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

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

  • For personalized support, including notifications of significant upgrades, subscribe at Product notification.

  • 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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