Release notes for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester, Rational® Test Virtualization Server, and Rational® Performance Test Server

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 IBM® Rational® Integration Tester, Rational® Test Virtualization Server, and Rational® Performance Test Server.
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.

    • Scheduled tests are visible to all logged users on Rational Test Control Panel

      Previously, when you scheduled a test run that runs on Rational® Test Control Panel, the domain-level security was not applied to the scheduled tests that resulted in the test being visible to all users logged on to Rational® Test Control Panel.

      This continues to be the behavior as the domain-level security cannot be applied for scheduled test runs. However, when you schedule a test run in Rational® Integration Tester, the UI indicates that the scheduled test will be visible to all users logged on to Rational® Test Control Panel.

    • Changing log levels of stubs without an auto restart

      Previously, when you changed the logging level of a stub that was running, the stub automatically restarted for the changes to take effect. At times, the auto restart of the stubs might have caused disruptions in your testing cycles.

      The behavior of the running stubs is enhanced, and now when you change the log levels of a running stub, the changes are applied without an auto restart of the stub.

    • Examples in Swagger UI

      Examples provided in the Rational® Test Control Panel Swagger UI are for guidance only. You must use the response data received as input to subsequent calls. The Swagger API Documentation is updated for such usage in certain API calls.

  • Technologies
    • Overriding results database

      When you want to run tests from the command line, you can now provide the URL, user name, password, and the database driver as arguments to override the Results Database that is configured in the project. You can optionally use an encrypted password that is generated by using the EncryptPassword application that is in the installation directory of Rational® Integration Tester.

    • Viewing progress of results deletion

      Previously, when you used the command line to delete results in a results database, you were not able to ascertain the progress nor the number of records that were being deleted.

      Now, you can view the progress of results deletion in a progress bar when you use the delete all results command. When you use the delete all results keeping <argument> command, you can view the number of records being deleted along with the progress in a progress bar.

      See Deleting all results by using the command line.

    • Recording SAP Hana S4 IDocs

      You can now record SAP Hana S/4 IDocs by using the Rational® Integration Tester ABAP plugin.

    • Support for IPIC and DPL

      Rational® Integration Tester now supports IPIC and DPL with CICS Transaction Server 5.6.

    • Support for symmetric and asymmetric key-based signature algorithms in SOAP requests

      You can now use any of the supported HMAC symmetric or asymmetric signature algorithms to sign certificates that you want to use in SOAP requests.

      The supported symmetric signature algorithms are as follows:
      • HMAC-MD5
      • HMAC-SHA1
      • HMAC-SHA256
      • HMAC-SHA384
      • HMAC-SHA512
      The supported asymmetric signature algorithms are as follows:
      • DSA-SHA1
      • ECDSA-SHA1
      • ECDSA-SHA256
      • ECDSA-SHA384
      • ECDSA-SHA512
      • RSA-SHA1
      • RSA-SHA256
      • SHA1
      • SHA384

      See Adding signatures.

    • Adding multiple child nodes to the query or mutation GraphQL document node

      Previously, you were able to add only one query or mutation node as a child to a GraphQL query or mutation document node.

      Now, you can add multiple query or mutation nodes as children to a GraphQL query or mutation document node.

      See Applying the GraphQL schema to a message and Editing GraphQL messages.

    • Working with DFDL-based messages is improved

      Previously, when you worked with messages that were based on a DFDL schema, empty fields prevented the message from being collapsed.

      Now, Rational® Integration Tester is enhanced to correctly manage the DFDL based messages as follows:
      • Newly created fields are populated with either the default or ibmDfdlExtn:sampleValue attributes.
      • Default values are added for boolean, byte, or numeric values if the values are not specified when the content in messages is previewed or sent.

      See Creating a DFDL schema.

    • Sending an error response by stubs

      When you use the Message Case in a Message Switch action to receive messages in a stub, you can now select the Send Error Response option to force the stub to send a response if the incoming message fails the validation that is set. The validation points are set in the Assert tab of the Message Case action configured in the stub.

      See The Properties tab.

    • Support for MQ 9.2

      The Rational® Integration Tester API agent for MQ (z/OS) now supports MQ 9.2.

Deprecated capabilities

The following capabilities are deprecated. IBM will no longer invest in enhancing these capabilities and is planning to remove them in a future release. If you have any concerns, contact either an IBM representative or your IBM Client Support team for this program:
  • Testing with Istio.
  • Testing with Kubernetes.

Capabilities removed

The following features that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are now removed in this release:
  • No capabilities are removed in this release

Installing and upgrading

You can find information about the installation and upgrade instructions for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester, Rational® Test Virtualization Server, and Rational® Performance Test Server.

Installing Rational® Integration Tester and Rational® Test Control Panel

For information about installation, see the following topics:

Installing Rational® Performance Test Server

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Performance Test Server.

Installing Rational® Test Virtualization Server

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Test Virtualization Server.

For information about the upgrade requirements, see:

Known issues

You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of Rational® Test Automation Server.

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

Table 1. Download documents and technotes
Product Download document Knowledge base
Rational® Integration Tester Release document Knowledge articles
Rational® Test Virtualization Server Release document Knowledge articles
Rational® Performance Test Server Release document Knowledge articles
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.