Release notes for IBM® Rational® Functional Tester

This document contains information about what's new, installation instructions, known problems in and contact information of IBM Customer Support.

Contents

Product description

IBM® Rational® Functional Tester is a GUI test automation tool that is used to accelerate the functional and regression testing. It provides a flexible environment to test the desktop and web applications very efficiently. It is used to test a wide range of applications that includes HTML, web, native and hybrid mobile, SAP, Java, Power Builder, and Windows desktop applications. Rational® Functional Tester is available in two integrated development environments (IDE): Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The Eclipse integration supports both Java and simplified (non-programming) method of scripting while the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET integration supports Microsoft Visual Basic .NET scripting language. See Rational Functional Tester overview.

What's New

  • General availability: Automated UI testing of Android and iOS applications

    The automated UI testing feature of Android and iOS applications is now generally available. You can use this feature to test native and hybrid Android and iOS applications on Android and iOS devices, simulators, and emulators. See Testing mobile applications.

  • General availability: Automated UI testing of Windows desktop applications

    The automated UI testing feature of Windows desktop application is now generally available. You can use this feature to test the Windows desktop applications and Add-ins in MS Office. See Testing Windows desktop applications.

  • Introducing the new execution agent as part of Rational® Functional Tester for enhanced mobile and Windows testing

    An execution agent is now delivered as part of Rational® Functional Tester. You can use this execution agent to perform the automation testing of the Windows desktop applications, mobile web, hybrid applications on iOS and Android devices. During the installation of Rational® Functional Tester, the execution agent is installed automatically based on the default selection of the Windows desktop Application testing (Next Generation) checkbox. See Installing Rational Functional Tester.

  • Support to run parallel mobile tests in the AFT test suite

    You can now run mobile tests in parallel when you specify the details of the mobile tests along with the devices in the AFT XML file. When you run the AFT test suite, these mobile tests are also run on the devices mentioned in the AFT XML file.

    You can run AFT tests for mobile applications from the command-line also.

    See Creating an AFT suite for mobile tests and Running mobile tests an AFT suite.

  • Support for exporting unified reports from the command-line

    When you play back Web UI tests from the command-line interface, you can now export the unified report that is generated for those Web UI tests to different formats such as PDF, HTML, and XML (JUnit). See Running a test from a command line.

  • Support for adding a new icon or changing the existing icon of the configured applications

    You can either add an icon of your choice while configuring the application or change an existing icon of the configured applications in the common web interface. See Configuring applications for tests.

  • Support for recording Functional and Web UI tests in the Microsoft Edge browser

    Earlier, you recorded tests in other browsers and played back in the Edge browser. Now, you can record tests by using the Edge browser for both Functional and Web UI tests. The Web UI tests can be recorded by using the Running browser instance option. See Enabling Microsoft Edge to test HTML applications and Enabling Microsoft Edge for Web UI testing.

  • Support to record and play back Functional tests by using the Microsoft Edge browser in the Visual Studio IDE

    You can now record and play back Functional tests by using the Microsoft Edge browser in the Visual Studio IDE. See Enabling Microsoft Edge to test HTML applications and Running a script from the Microsoft Edge browser.

  • Bug Fixes

    Fixed customer-reported and internally found defects.

Installing the product

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, follow the directions in the download document at Rational® Functional Tester 10.2.0.

For installation instructions, see Installing Rational Functional Tester.

Remember:

  • You cannot upgrade to the latest version of the product. You must first uninstall the existing version of the product before you install the latest version of the product.

  • After you install Rational® Functional Tester 10.2.0, at any point in time if you want to use the previous version of the product, you cannot roll back to the previous version. If you want to use the previous version of the product, you must uninstall the existing version, and then install the required version of the product.

Known issues

You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of Rational® Functional Tester.

Product Download document Knowledge base

Rational® Functional Tester

Release document

Knowledge articles

Known problems are documented in the download document and in the form of individual tech notes in the Support Knowledge Base. See the Support Knowledge Base.

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

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

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

  • For personalized support that includes notifications of significant upgrades, subscribe to Product notification.

  • Before you contact IBM Rational Software Support, you must gather the background information that you might need to describe your problem. When you describe 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.