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 Product overview.

What's New

  • Support to record and play back Web UI tests in the private mode of web browsers

    You can now record and play back Web UI tests in the private mode of web browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera.

    See Recording a Web UI test and Running tests in the private or incognito mode.

    You can also use the command line to run tests in the private mode. See Running Web UI tests in the private mode from the command line.

  • Support to run an AFT Suite on mobile clouds

    You can now run an AFT Suite that contains mobile tests on mobile devices that are connected to the mobile clouds. You can also run an AFT Suite to run the mobile tests simultaneously on devices that are connected to multiple mobile cloud platforms.

    See Accelerated Functional Tests and Configuration of AFT Suite runs.

  • Recording UI tests of web applications that are enabled with Content Security Policy

    You can now record UI tests in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge for web applications that are enabled with Content Security Policy.

  • Resource monitoring of mobile devices and applications

    You can now use Rational® Functional Tester to capture resource monitoring metrics of Android applications, devices, or emulators, or iOS applications or devices. You can enable Rational® Functional Tester to capture the resource monitoring metrics when the following types of tests are run:

    • Single mobile test run on a single device.

    • Single mobile test run on multiple devices in parallel.

    • Single mobile test run on a single device from the command line.

    • Compound tests with multiple mobile tests or at least one mobile test run on a single device.

    See Running mobile tests for iOS mobile applications and UI Test Statistical report.

  • Conversion of unassociated datapools to datasets in FT projects

    Previously, the shared but unassociated datapools from functional test projects, which were created in the older version of Rational® Functional Tester, did not display in the workbench after you opened the projects in the newer version. Now, such datapools are converted and displayed as datasets in your project.

  • Healing Web UI tests through the command line

    You can now enable the self-healing feature when you run Web UI tests or compound tests from the command line. Rational® Functional Tester identifies UI changes in the application under test and heals the test for a successful run. See Overview of guided healing and self-healing.

  • Exporting unified reports to multiple formats through the command line

    Previously, you were able to export the unified report in any one supported format at a time from the command line.

    You can now export unified reports for functional and Web UI tests in all the supported formats such as xml, pdf, and html simultaneously by using a single option from the command line. See Configuration of test runs from the command line.

  • Updated integration plugins for Web UI tests

    You can now use the following additional options when you run Web UI tests by using the integration plugins:
    Parameters Integration Plugins
    Azure DevOps IBM® UrbanCode™ Deploy MicroFocus ALM Ant Jenkins Maven
    Export stats format image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    Exportstatshtml image of the tickmark.
    Import image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    Labels image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    Publish image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    Publish for image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    Publish Reports image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark. image of the tickmark.
    For more information on parameters of the integration plugins, read the following topics:

  • Viewing test run results on the Azure test plans dashboard

    When you use the Rational® Test Workbench Azure extension in Azure pipelines to run tests on Rational® Functional Tester, you can view the test results on the Jobs page.

    Additionally, you can now view the results of the test runs on the test plans dashboard by setting up test plans with test cases for your project in Azure. You must also provide details about the Azure server, your personal access token, the Azure project, the test case, and the test plan while you configure the test run for the test results to display on the test plans dashboard. See Running UI tests in an Azure DevOps Pipeline and Running functional tests in an Azure DevOps Pipeline.

Deprecated capabilities

You can find information about the capabilities that are deprecated in this release and are planned for a removal in a future release.
Note: You can contact the IBM Support team if you have any concerns.
  • Support for the following operating systems is deprecated:
    • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
    • Windows 7 Enterprise
    • Windows 7 Professional
    • Windows 7 Ultimate
    • Android 10
    • iOS 13
  • Support for the following software are deprecated:
    • .Net Applications 3.5, 4, and 4.5.2
    • SAP GUI 7.6
  • Support for the following browser is deprecated:
    • Google Chrome 84 to 90
    • Microsoft Edge 84 and 90
    • Mozilla Firefox 78 to 88
    • Opera 70 to 76

Removed capabilities

The following features that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are now removed in this release:
  • Support for the following operating systems is removed:
    • RHEL 7.7, 7.8, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3
  • Support for the following software is removed:
    • Eclipse 4.4 and 4.6
    • IBM Java 6 and 7
    • Oracle Java 6, 7, 9 and 10
    • Sun Java 6.0/1.6
    • Adobe Flex SDK 3.2 and 4.0
    • Power Builder 12.5
    • SAP GUI 7.5 compilation 2
    • Appium 1.16 and 1.17
    • Rational ClearCase 8.0.1
      Note: Support for the use of the IBM® Rational® Functional Tester IDE plugin to connect and use IBM® Rational® ClearCase® from IBM® Rational® Functional Tester is deprecated.
    • Rational Quality Manager 6.0.3 and 6.0.5
    • Rational Team Concert 6.0.3, 6.0.4, and 6.0.5
  • Support for the following browser version is removed:
    • Google Chrome 78 to 83
    • Microsoft Edge 80 to 83
    • Mozilla Firefox 69, 70, 72 to 77
    • Mozilla Firefox ESR 68
    • Opera 67 to 69

Installing the product

For installation instructions, see Installing Rational Functional Tester.

Remember:

  • You cannot upgrade to Rational® Functional Tester 10.2.3 from the previous versions. You must uninstall the existing version of the product before you install the latest version of the product.

  • After you install Rational® Functional Tester 10.2.3, 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.