Managing domains

How to create and manage domains in IBM® Rational® Test Control Panel.

Domains and environments explained

A domain represents a logical grouping of related systems that are part of a real business project and it is the basic unit of management within IBM® Rational® Test Virtualization Server. It might be served by one or more Rational® Integration Tester or Rational® Test Virtualization Server projects, depending on how large or small the domain is, and how many Rational® Integration Tester/Rational® Test Virtualization Server users are working on it.

It is usual for a service or other endpoint to appear in more than one domain because it is reused by different business projects in different contexts. Thus, a domain is used as a means to group and manage assets in Rational® Test Control Panel. For example, unique business groups within an organization may want to manage stubs independently from each other.

Stubs created in Rational® Test Virtualization Server are published into domains, and agents and proxies can be restricted so that they accept instructions only from stubs running in particular domains.

Thus, after stubs have been published to Rational® Test Control Panel, they can be started and stopped by using Rational® Test Control Panel, and the routing of messages (to stubs or live systems) can be controlled at domain level.

Note: If domain-level security is enabled, you can use only the domains to which you have been granted access.

A domain can contain one or more environments. In Rational® Integration Tester and Rational® Test Virtualization Server, an environment enables users to define groups of variables or tags that can be used in both tests and in transport definitions.

Typically, environments are used to create configurations for different parts of a software product development workflow, for example, development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, and so on.

Environments are not created directly within Rational® Test Control Panel. Instead, they are created automatically when stubs are published from Rational® Test Virtualization Server (because stubs are published into an environment within a domain) or when an Rational® Integration Tester Proxy or Agent registers with Rational® Test Control Panel specifying an environment name.

The following topics describe how to create, modify, and delete domains.

Create domains

A domain can be created by using any of the following methods:

  • An initial domain can be (optionally) created during installation of Rational® Test Control Panel.
  • Manually by using the Rational® Test Control Panel application (if you are an administrator).
  • Manually by using the Rational® Integration Tester application. (In Rational® Integration Tester, whenever you are asked to select a domain, you have option to create a new domain if you license enables you to create additional domains.)
  • When an Rational® Integration Tester Proxy registers with a specific Rational® Test Control Panel instance using a domain that does not already exist in that instance.

The following topics describe how to use Rational® Test Control Panel and Rational® Integration Tester to create domains.