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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.
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 phases
A new, empty test always consists of three basic phases: Initialize, Test Steps and Tear-down.

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 phases
      A new, empty test always consists of three basic phases: Initialize, Test Steps and Tear-down.
    - Test views
      Two views are available for a test, the Technical View and the Business View .
    - Creating a single empty test
      You can create a single empty test in Rational® Integration Tester, and you must add the test steps to the created test before you can run the test.
    - Creating a single test by using MEP
      You can create a single test from a Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) in Rational® Integration Tester from the Test Factory view. An operations MEP defines the pattern, schema, and binding for messages that are exchanged by the operation. You can create a test that adheres to the rules defined in the MEP.
    - Creating multiple tests by using MEP
      You can create multiple tests from a Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) in Rational® Integration Tester from the Test Factory view. An operations MEP defines the pattern, schema, and binding for messages that are exchanged by the operation. You can create multiple tests that adhere to the rules defined in the MEP.
    - Creating a test from a template
      After you create a test template, you can quickly create new tests from it.
    - Creating tests by pasting
      You can create one or more tests by pasting one or more lines of text that are currently on the clipboard. New tests are named according to the pasted text. Each line of text on the clipboard creates a unique test, and the tests are created within the component or folder that is selected when pasting.
    - Creating tests from recorded events
      Tests can be created by using events that are captured in the Recording Studio.
    - Contract testing
      When you want to ascertain the validity of the responses sent from a server to the requests by a client in a system under test, you can define a schema for the expected messages, and then the incoming messages can be validated against the defined schema for adherence to a contract. You can create Contract tests in Rational® Integration Tester that validate the schema in the incoming messages for conformance with the schema defined for the messages.
    - Setting the Test properties by the input and output tags
      Use the Properties tab to define which tags are to be available on the input and output interface for the selected test.
    - Overriding the inherited integration for change management applications
      Rational® Integration Tester can be integrated with OSLC-compliant change management systems for raising defects within the context of a Rational Integration Tester test asset.
    - Changing the contents of a test
      You can add or edit test actions, change the test action type, enable or disable test actions, and save messages as requirements.
    - Filtering header values
      If you are using a stub to test more than one web service from a single URL, you can use header values to distinguish between the services.
    - Monitoring a log file during a test
      If a log file is configured on any of the bound infrastructure components of the project, that file can be monitored during the execution of a test.
    - Example: Monitoring a remote log file
      In this example, you add a log file to a database server. With the log file added, you can then monitor that file when you run a test.
    - The Tag Data Store
      The Tag Data Store, which is accessed from the menu anywhere within a test, is the repository and access point for all of the data tags that are available to a test.
    - Message cases
      Message cases are used in Message Switch actions. To add a message case to an existing message switch, right-click the message switch and select Add Message Case from the menu.
    - Pass paths
      You can define action sequences to be carried out when a subscription-based action passes (that is, Subscribe, Receive Request, and Receive Reply).
    - Failure paths
      To specify that a test take different steps when a specific action fails, you can create a failure path and define sequences of actions for it. For example, a Publish action can fail to publish a message, or a subscriber can fail to subscriber properly or an incoming message might not pass validation.
    - Running or scheduling the running of a test
      You initiate a test execution in the Test Factory, but the test is run in the Test Lab perspective. After you start a test, the Test Lab perspective is displayed, from where you monitor the tests execution. A test can be run either in the current environment or in any other environment.
    - Creating performance tests
      A performance test includes one or more instances of a Rational® Integration Tester test plus a number of probes that measure the load on external systems (for example, messaging servers). The following describes how to create a performance test.
  - 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.
- 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 phases

A new, empty test always consists of three basic phases: Initialize, Test Steps and Tear-down.

The essential usage of the three steps is as follows:

The Initialize phase must be restricted to executing commands that start or configure plug-ins, servers, or target resources. This phase can be used for test preparation (for example, populating environment variables), but if these variables are overwritten in the test steps, they are not restored to their original values.
Note: Test data set values are not accessible from the Initialize phase.
The Test Steps phase must contain the actions that are used in the test. If the test is part of a repeated or concurrent execution (by using a stub or a performance test), then the Test Steps phase is the only one that is executed for each iteration.
Similar to initialization, the Tear-down phase must be used only for deallocation of resources, termination of processes, and so on. The Tear-down phase is only executed by the last test to be processed when executed repeatedly or concurrently.
Note: The Initialize and Tear-down phases are always run around the test, and the Tear-down phase runs even if the test fails. These phases are useful in stubs and performance tests where the body of the test is called multiple times, but actions within the other phases must run only once each.