Release notes for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester

This document contains information about What's new, installation, known issues, and contact information of IBM Support.

Contents

Product description

Rational® Integration Tester is an integration testing and virtualization tool that includes capabilities to automate and run tests earlier and more often to find problems sooner in the development cycle. See Rational Integration Tester overview.

What's new

You can find information about the features introduced in this release of Rational® Integration Tester.

The following sections list the new features, enhancements, or other changes made in this release.

  • Rational® Test Automation Server

    For information about Rational® Test Automation Server, see Release notes.

  • Rational® Test Control Panel

    • Tools page

      The list of agents changed for a release was updated. Review the Tools page of Rational® Test Control Panel to see each tool and the version that it was last changed.

    • The latest version of the agents is displayed

      The IBM® WebSphere® MQ agent for IBM® z/OS® andIBM® CICS DPL agent now display the latest version when they are started. The latest MQ agent and CICS DPL agent have the same functions as the previous version of agents. Therefore, you need not upgrade them to the latest agent versions.

  • New licensing option to install Rational® Integration Tester Agent

    When you are installing Rational® Integration Tester Agent, a new option is available to install the agent so that it uses concurrent virtual service licensing. See Licenses for Rational Test Virtualization Server.

  • Notification about versions released

    When you open Rational® Integration Tester V10.1.3 or later, a notification is displayed about the released version after a later version is released.

  • Technologies
    • Support for creating data-driven tests

      Previously, you created multiple tests with the same test structure for varying test data that were based on the MEP configured for an operation. Now, you can use the Fixed option during the test creation to create different tests for each of the variable test data.

      You can now use the Data Driven option to create multiple data-driven tests that depend on the structure of the schema that is defined for the messages and the content combinations that you specify with either of the following results:
      • A single test with multiple content iterations is created if the underlying schema had one structural choice. Also, the test data in an Excel worksheet is created that specifies the values for the iterations which are used at the test run time.
      • Multiple tests with different test structures and content iterations are created if the underlying schema had multiple structural choices. The test data are created in different files that are used by each of the data-driven tests during the test run time.

      Also, the text in UI options to create a single test and multiple tests are now truncated with the text using MEP removed from the options.

      See Creating multiple tests by using MEP.

    • Automatic creation of a physical resource when a logical resource is created

      Rational Integration Tester now has a default preference enabled to create a physical resource automatically when you create a logical resource.

      When this preference is disabled, Rational Integration Tester creates a physical resource only if there is no other physical resource of the same type as the logical resource that you create.

      See Changing preferences.

    • Added the Authentication tab for configuring HTTP transports

      You can now configure the authentication options for HTTP transports or physical web servers by using the Authentication tab in the transport settings UI. The OAuth2 authentication is also included in this tab.

      The Experimental tab that existed in previous versions, which provided the OAuth2/OpenID authentication option, is now removed.

      See Creating physical web server resources.

    • Specifying ephemeral port overrides in the RunTests command

      When you use the RunTests command, you can now specify the ephemeral ports as an option so that when a stub is started, which uses a transport that opens a server socket unless explicitly overridden with the ports specified.

      See Run tests by using the command line.

    • Changes to the Maximum Optional Fields option limit for messages

      Previously, the Maximum Optional Fields limit that you set for messages in the project preferences was also applied to the number of optional nodes that was displayed for a schema in the Schema Library view. This behavior is changed.

      The maximum number of optional nodes that are displayed in the Schema Library view is now limited to 500 and cannot be changed. The limit that is set as the project preferences is applied to other areas such as in the Schema Selector menu.

    • Introducing the licensing identifier environment variable

      When you want to run stubs in Docker containers, you can now specify a licensing identifier environment variable. The identifier helps you to identify the consumption of licenses when reviewed in the licensing server.

    • Db2 z/OS stubs display warnings

      Db2 z/OS stubs now display warnings when they encounter unsupported cursor types.

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.
  • The Action Group as a test flow action is deprecated.

Removed capabilities

Support for the following operating systems or supported software that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are removed in this release:
  • GUI Interaction capability removed

    The GUI Interaction capability that was previously deprecated is removed.

Installing and upgrading

You can find information about the installation and upgrade instructions for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester.

Installing Rational® Integration Tester

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Integration Tester.

Installing Rational® Test Control Panel

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Test Control Panel.

Upgrading Rational® Integration Tester

If you use Installation Manager, you can find the upgrade requirements in Rational Integration Tester upgrade information and requirements.

Upgrading Rational® Test Control Panel

If you use Installation Manager, you can find the upgrade requirements in Rational Test Control Panel upgrade information and requirements.

Known issues

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

Table 1. Release documents - Fix list and known issues
Product Download document Knowledge base
Rational® Integration Tester Release document Knowledge articles

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

Note: Starting from 9.5.0 a single fix list document and a single download document is used for all products.

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

  • 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.