Home
Reference Guide
This guide provides the topics to help the Integration tester use the product by using the user interface, commands or scripts. This guide is intended for Integration testers.
Test Factory
The Test Factory perspective is one of the main areas in Rational® Integration Tester. You can create all the tests and the required artifacts/data to support them.
Test data sources
You can configure test data sources that can drive a test template or a test by using several different instances of data. In this way, you can parameterize your tests, substituting specific data from a pre-configured source in different test iterations. You can also use test data to validate the results that are returned by different test actions.

Reference Guide
This guide provides the topics to help the Integration tester use the product by using the user interface, commands or scripts. This guide is intended for Integration testers.
- Rational® Integration Tester overview
  This section provides an overview of Rational® Integration Tester, including information about projects and files, the Rational Integration Tester user interface, environments, and project settings and preferences.
- Architecture School
  Use the Architecture School perspective to build a system under test by using the logical, physical, and synchronization views. You can also use this perspective to manage the schemas available in your project.
- Recording Studio
  With Rational® Integration Tester, you can record events (messages or database interactions) sent to and from the system under test. Use Recording Studio to control what parts of the system should be recorded. These parts could be specific parts of the system infrastructure or specific services using that infrastructure. You can then use the recorded events as a source of tests and other interactions with the system. In Recording Studio, you can record the traffic over a number of different transports.
- Test Factory
  The Test Factory perspective is one of the main areas in Rational® Integration Tester. You can create all the tests and the required artifacts/data to support them.
  - Tests: Overview and tasks
    Tests are the fundamental building blocks of integration and SOA testing. A test sends an input message to an external service or system in a protocol-specific way and validates the reply against an expected result.
  - Test Suites: Overview and tasks
    A Test Suite represents a group of tests, test suites, and scenarios. Any combination of these items can be included, but a test suite must always contain at least one scenario and one test. Test suites are used mainly to construct reusable, packaged regression tests that can be run across multiple environments, or repeatedly within the same environment.
  - Stubs: Overview and tasks
    Stubs can be used to simulate services that you are unable to use or that are otherwise unavailable.
  - The Action Editor
    The Action Editor is used to modify the actions that are contained within a test or stub.
  - Creating a test template
    To save time when you are creating tests, you can create a template of test sequences that can be used to quickly create a number of pre-defined tests.
  - Test data sources
    You can configure test data sources that can drive a test template or a test by using several different instances of data. In this way, you can parameterize your tests, substituting specific data from a pre-configured source in different test iterations. You can also use test data to validate the results that are returned by different test actions.
    - Creating a test data source
      You create a test data source that you can then use to validate the results that are returned by different test actions.
    - Creating test data from tags in a test
      You can create test data from the tags defined in a test from the Test Editor. You can then use the test data to validate the results that are returned by different test actions.
    - Creating test data sources from recorded events
      You can create test data sources by using events that are captured in the Recording Studio.
    - Configuring a database data source
      You can use a database source to supply live data to Rational® Integration Tester. A database source relies on a valid database connection in Architecture School.
    - Configuring a directory data source
      You can use a directory data source to populate tag values from the contents of complete files or their properties and to read data from the resources in a specified file system directory or a project folder.
    - Configuring delimited files as a data source
      Delimited files contain "columns" of data that are separated by a specific character (for example, a comma or a tab).
    - Configuring fixed width files as a data source
      Fixed width files contain columns of data that are in fixed positions within the file (for example, "Emp/Last Name" uses the first 15 characters, "Emp/First Name" uses the next 15 characters).
    - Configuring a Microsoft™ Excel data source
      A Microsoft™ Excel data source can be used to populate tag values from a Microsoft Excel (.xls and .xslx) file.
    - Creating tags from data source fields
      Before you can use the data from any configured source, a tag must be defined for each value.
    - Using tags to define test data for dynamic data access
      Tags can be used in test data set definitions to provide dynamic data access. The tags can be used within file locations, file names, and database queries. You can reference environment or system tags by selecting the tags from the menu while test tags have to be entered manually.
    - Editing test data source
      You can edit a test data source when you want to change or add test data to test a different scenario.
- Test Lab
  You use the Test Lab to execute test assets, repair tests, and open test assets for editing directly from this perspective. You can execute all of the tests, test suites, and stubs that are created in Test Factory.
- Results Gallery
  You use the Results Gallery perspective to view an execution summary and detailed coverage, error, and performance reports for executed test suites and for test cases that were executed within a suite or as part of a test cycle.
- Messages
  Rational® Integration Tester can publish and subscribe to messages as part of a test. A message normally consists of two parts: a header and a body. The header usually adheres to a predefined logical construction, while the structure of the body can be more arbitrary.
- Schemas
  Rational® Integration Tester can handle many types of content. For the product to be able to interpret the variety of content types, it must associate a content format description, or schema with the content.
- Database resources, connections, and bindings
  Rational® Integration Tester can interact with any database that supports connectivity through the JDBC specification. These interactions can be used to extract or update data where necessary, and test data sets can be taken directly from database table content.
- Identity stores and SSL
  An identity store can group a collection of one or more certificates that can be used in IBM® Rational® Integration Tester to validate and authenticate connections that use SSL. After you create an identity store, you can use it to enable SSL communications in various messaging transports.
- Scripting within tests and stubs
  You can use scripts in Rational® Integration Tester that include the Rational Integration Tester legacy scripting language, ECMAScript (such as JavaScript™), or any third-party scripting language that you install.
- External tools
  Rational® Integration Tester is primarily GUI-based, but you can also run or view tests, suites, and stubs outside of the Rational Integration Tester.
- Test actions
  Actions are the building blocks of a test. A test consists of a series of steps and each step is an action. Actions can be defined for tests and stubs.
- Formatting and parsing date-time patterns
  For some fields in Rational® Integration Tester, you can define patterns for date-time formatting. Pattern letters are repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation of the date-time information that they represent.
- The Add Numbers service
  The Add Numbers service, included with Rational® Integration Tester, provides a simple way to generate messages that you can observe with topology discovery or capture in Recording Studio.

Test data sources

You can configure test data sources that can drive a test template or a test by using several different instances of data. In this way, you can parameterize your tests, substituting specific data from a pre-configured source in different test iterations. You can also use test data to validate the results that are returned by different test actions.

For example, you can perform a function (for example, add) on two columns of data from a database or Microsoft™ Excel spreadsheet, then validate the function results against a third column of data in the data source.

Rational® Integration Tester supports four different test data types (database, directory, file, and Microsoft™ Excel).

If the test data source location is on a mapped network drive, you might get errors when running performance tests. To prevent any errors, ensure that the files are available on a local drive that can be accessed by Rational® Integration Tester.