Rational Test Workbench 8.0.1

Change History

These new features apply to Rational Test Workbench, Rational Test Virtualization Server, and Rational Performance Test Server. Some of the features require Rational Test Virtualization Server and Rational Performance Test Server licenses.

Mainframe (z) Support:

• Release 8.0.1 expands the support for the z mainframe. A new document, the z/OS Reference Guide, covering the new functionality has been added to the installation set
• CICS Transaction Gateway Test and Record. A new CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG) transport has been added to the Architecture School perspective (logical and physical views). This allows for functional and performance testing of CICS transactions via the CTG. It is also possible to record transaction invocations made through the CTG in Tester’s Recording Studio perspective. These events can be used to create tests and datasets.
• IMS Connect Test and Record. A new IMS Connect transport has been added to the Architecture School perspective (logical and physical view). This allows for functional and performance testing of IMS transactions via IMS Connect. It is also possible to record transaction invocations made through IMS Connect in Tester’s Recording Studio perspective. These events can be then used to create tests and datasets.
• The technology that allows Rational Integration Tester to record messages put onto IBM WebSphere MQ queues without requiring any client configuration changes is now supported for Queue Managers running on z/OS. As with the existing distributed support for IBM WebSphere MQ, recording of individual queues or all queues can be performed.
• The installation and configuration details in the z/OS should be studied carefully before this is installed and use. The following should be specifically noted:
• Every message that is intercepted has an MQPUT1 to the Rational Integration Tester queue. This doubles the CPU cost of a MQPUT or MQPUT1. To reduce the overhead, select only the messages that you are interested in. Avoid intercepting all messages.
• To avoid problems with the Rational Integration Tester queue filling up, you should have a low message rate of intercepted messages, for example 10's of messages a second.

Messages are not intercepted when:

• The queue name is SYSTEM.* and AMQ.MQEXPLORER.*
• Messages put to a QALIAS of a topic
• Puts are the result of an integrated publish/subscribe action.

Messages put to a QALIAS queue are recorded against the base queue.
• Tester now supports virtualization of z/OS DB2 databases. The virtual database can run on a separate DB2 instance on z/OS or on the distributed platform. This allows users to create virtual databases that do not require z/OS to run.
• IBM has used Rational Integration Tester to invoke web services hosted on CICS. IBM has also tested that a CICS transaction can successfully call a Rational-Integration-Tester-virtualized SOAP web service. Details on the CICS configuration used during this testing can be found it the z/OS Reference Guide.

• Support for EDI X12 dictionaries has been added. Rational Integration Tester can create new messages from the X12 dictionaries and parse, edit and publish standards-compliant X12 messages. Validations will be applied as per the supported dictionaries. As with other messaging standards, Tester will attempt to parse incomplete or invalid messages and will also allow a user to construct and publish messages that do not comply to the standard dictionary in order to perform negative testing.
• A new field expander (schema) has been added to allow for the parsing of hexadecimal strings into Byte Arrays. This allows, for example, a hex string contained in an XML element to be converted into a Byte Array so that a further field expander such as Copybook can be applied. [released as part of the 8.0.0.2 fix-pack]
• Support for Data Format Description Language (DFDL) grammars has been added. This allows Tester to import a DFDL-defined message structure and use that information to parse, edit and publish messages compliant to that grammar.
• The http transport now supports message bodies that have been compressed using gzip.
• It is now possible to configure WS-Security on a Publish action such that WS-x elements (such as WS-Addressing, WS-Security and the body) are individually signed rather than having to sign the whole message. It is also now possible to sign using the certificate chain. [released as part of the 8.0.0.2 fix-pack]
• It is now possible to add in header values for FIX messages in the Value and Store stabs of a publisher and Filter, Assert and Store tabs of a subscriber. This allows sending and validation of the FIX header structure when using the FIX schema. For a publisher any values specified here will override values that are set according to the FIX transport configuration such as SenderCompID and TargetCompID. Note that the header fields displayed are the superset from the latest version of the FIX 4.x standard. If a user is creating messages for earlier versions of the standard they must know which headers are appropriate for that version.
  
  If header values require validation in a subscriber then the root message validation must be enabled and configured to:
• Accept fields in any order
• Ignore additional fields in received messages [released as part of the 8.0.0.2 fix-pack]

• Stubs built on the MQ (distributed), http and webMethods IS transports now support additional capabilities to control how they handle received messages. They can be configured to automatically pass-through a message to the real service if it does not match a defined case. A new action has also been added to allow a user to specifically cause the message to be passed on to the live system as part of the normal stub processing if required. An optional delay can be specified before the message is passed to the live system. It is also possible to configure the stub to automatically respond with a transport-specific error if the received message does not match a defined case.
• Database virtualization has been extended to support Stored Procedures on Oracle, MySQL, DB2 and MS SQL Server. When a virtual database is learnt all stored procedure invocations and their responses will be added to the virtual database. The saved responses can be edited and filter criteria defined to control how the virtual database will respond given a set of input parameters to the stored procedure.
• Rational Test Control Panel now allows a user to define a scenario, which is a saved set of pre-configured stubs that can be started as a single unit. This saves time and prevents errors when starting up a set of virtual services as each stub no longer needs to be configured and started individually.
• It is now possible for a user to lock an environment in RTCP. This prevents other users from making changes to the virtual services that are running. This capability is available from within RTCP itself, via a REST API onto RTCP (also from ANT scripts) and from within Rational Integration Tester. This allows Testers to use RTVS in long-lived test cases without risk of another user changing the stub configuration and affecting the test outcome.
• The support for REST-based virtual services has been significantly extended. The Recording Studio wizards will now automatically create REST-based stubs from recorded traffic and Tester will automatically detect message data in URLs and make this available to the stub without the need for script to process it.
• The Message Difference Window (MDW) has been extended to support stubs. Users may open the MDW from the console output to understand how a message interacted with a stub’s filters. This allows testers to easily identify why their stub is responding as it is and allow ‘repairs’ to be made to quickly change this behavior.
• Microsoft SQL Server virtualization now supports the JTDS driver as well as the MS SQL driver.
• The default installation of Rational Integration Tester and the Rational Integration Tester Agent now includes two JVM arguments to force Java-6 behavior when IP ports are allocated. This means that if an http stub attempts to start on a port that is already in use it will automatically detect this and allocate a different port. This makes it easier to run the real and virtual service on a single machine. In previous 8.0.x releases user has to manually add –D arguments to the GHTester.ini files to get this behavior.
• It is now possible to start a stub on an RTVS server as part of a test suite scenario. Previously all stubs used in test suites had to run locally within the copy of Rational Integration Tester. This allows test suites to run stubs without tps restrictions. When you run such a suite the Tester task monitor will show the stubs as individual items even though they are not actually running within Rational Integration Tester. As part of this the way in which stubs show progress has been modified:
• If a stub is a cancelled or fails during start-up (before it is ready to accept messages) it will show 0% complete.
• When the stub is stopped progress will jump to 99% before the shut-down process begins
• At the end of the shut-down process the progress will change to 100%, regardless of whether errors occurred in shut down or not.

• Rational Integration Tester now supports multiple versions of the sap JCO3 library (sapjco3.jar) and does not require a single specific version to operate correctly.

• The default view in the stub editor has been simplified to make it easier for new users. Users may switch to an ‘advanced’ view to gain access to all of the features. The advanced view will automatically be used if a stub is opened that makes use of the advanced features.
• A preference has been added to limit the number of optional fields created from a schema to prevent memory issues with extremely large schemas. Typically this problem would occur when using the Create Test from MEP feature on XSDs with broad and deep structures of optional elements. [released as part of the 8.0.0.3 fix-pack]
• Architecture School’s Schema Library now shows ordered lists of schemas for message protocols such as X12 that contain multiple ‘groups’ (e.g dictionaries).
• When RTVS Agents register with RTCP it is now possible for them to register with user-defined attributes. These attributes can be used when determining which agent a stub should be run on. This is particularly useful when defining a scenario within RTCP as it removes the need to specify agents by name or IP address, thus making the scenario more resilient to environment change. For example, agent attributes can be used to express geographic location, operating system, performance and capability of the machine an agent is installed on. An agent matching given attributes will then be found when a scenario starts. These attributes can also be used when scheduling a test for later execution.
• The Rational Test Control Panel user-interface has had a number of small improvements and changes made to it to increase usability and consistency.
• The Tag Data Store dialog within Tester now remembers the selection status of environment and system tags meaning that if a user turns them off they will stay hidden.
• When navigating through test results using Rational Test Control Panel’s Results Gallery feature Next and Previous now automatically expand the tree of results.
• The Project->Refresh menu option now displays a progress dialog if it takes more than a very short period of time.
• The Bindings table in the Environment Editor can be sorted by clicking on the headings.
• When an element is marked as repeating [in the message editor] an icon appears immediately as visual feedback of the repeat.
• The Rational Test Control Panel Agent view now shows the type of agents that are registered. Possible values are RTVS (can run stubs, performance tests and probes), RPTS (can run performance tests and probes) and Probe (can only run probes). This makes it easier for a user to understand the capability of the deployed agents.

• It is now possible to use the JDBC Virtualization configuration from within Tester for an instance of WebSphere Application Server that has security enabled.
• Changes have been made to Library Manager to make it easier to configure Rational Integration Tester for use with WebSphere Application Server’s native JMS implementation. However, see the Known Issues list at the end of this document as a problem will occur if security is enabled in WAS.

• Subscribe actions for MQ-based operations now support the non-destructive watch-mode. This allows Tester to ‘watch’ for a message being published to an MQ queue without having to subscribe to (and consume) the message. This is particularly useful in integration tests where Tester is being used to validate that a message has been published. As part of this work the UI for the watch-mode configuration across MQ, HTTP and EMS transports has been made consistent.
• The API-Exit to enable MQ recording and sift-and-pass-through now supports MQ 7.1.x as well as 7.0.1.x on supported distributed platforms [Windows (32, 64bit), Linux (32, 64 bit), AIX (64 bit), Solaris Sparc (64 bit), Solaris x86 (64 bit)]. MQ 7.5.x is not currently supported.
• The default number of Queue Manager connections for a physical MQ transport is now 5 (increased from 1). This setting defines the maximum number of connections Tester will make to the Queue Manager for that transport. If a user records, stubs and tests using the same MQ transport then a single connection is insufficient and some processes will block. Note that another workaround is to define separate transports for recording, stubbing and testing that are all configured to the same Queue Manager.

• Rational Test Control Panel now offers a REST-based API that can be used to start and stop stubs and scenarios and lock environments. The Platform Pack includes example ANT scripts showing how this can be used as part of a build/test environment to automatically start virtual services as part of a continuous-integration test environment.

• A File Publisher has been added to the list of Result Publisher types. This enables a suite report to be published to a specified location on disk. The File Publisher will also write out results in JUnit XML format. [released as part of the 8.0.0.1 fix-pack]
• Support for Test Cycles has been added to the Rational Test Control Panel Result Gallery view.
• The Rational Test Control Panel Results Gallery date/time search now returns all executions which started between the entered start/finish times, rather than requiring the execution to have finished before the finish time.

• Rational Integration Tester now offers integration to IBM’s InfoSphere Optim product. This integration allows users of Rational Integration Tester to automatically perform Optim actions as part of test or stub start-up. For example, a user can initiate a test data refresh within Optim that causes a test data set used by a Rational Integration Tester stub to be reset to a known state without the Rational Integration Tester user having to understand how to issue Optim commands.

• If a requirement linked to tests is deleted then the user is now warned that the deletion will impact tests. A search is run to find all of the tests linked to that requirement. The user is given the option of ‘in-lining’ the requirement into each test.

• The Recording Studio perspective has a new “Playback” button which will replay recorded events. The user can specify the “pacing” speed with which messages are published (as-fast-as-possible, defined interval or as-original). Rules and functions in the Rules Cache may be used to allow basic modifications to message contents as they are published. Playback will work on events that have been exported and re-imported (into the same project). [released as part of the 8.0.0.1 fix-pack]

• DB2 is now supported as a Results Database. The Rational Integration Tester installation includes a DB2 database script which is intended for use by DB2 DBAs. Rational Integration Tester, Rational Integration Tester Agent and RTCP installations all include a DB2 driver (which will automatically appear in Library Manager) to avoid the need to download it separately. Note that use of DB2 on Z does require a DB2 Connect license which is not provided with Rational Integration Tester.
• The Library Manager configuration for using WebSphere Application Server’s JNDI to access MQ/JMS resources has been made simpler and clearer to set-up.
• The Rational Integration Tester Platform Pack Proxy can now be configured to use a down-stream proxy. This is useful in cases where the system it is sending messages to can only be access via another TCP/HTTP proxy.
• A default installation of the Rational Integration Tester Agent will now output information to a log file and the console window. Previously a great deal of useful information was only sent to the console output which meant it was lost of the Agent was running as a Windows service. If the service is configured to run as the Local System Account then, on Windows, the default directory for this log file will be C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile.
• Support has been added for extended feature codes to enable additional capabilities. [released as part of the 8.0.0.3 fix-pack]
• It is now possible to install a Rational Integration Tester Agent in a mode that only allows the execution of probes. This type of installation does not require the Agent to be PVU-licensed and is intended for use in Performance Testing scenarios. [released as part of the 8.0.0.1 fix-pack]

• A new concept of Environment Tasks has been added to Rational Integration Tester. These allow ‘actions’ to be run prior to starting stubs to configure the environment to a known state.
• The Stored Procedure action has been enhanced to allow for the assertion of result sets returned by the procedure. This includes both explicit ‘out’ parameter result sets and implicit result sets, such as the one returned by the ‘last’ select statement in a Microsoft SQL Server stored procedure. [released as part of the 8.0.0.2 fix-pack]