Release notes for IBM® Rational® Performance Tester

Rational® Performance Tester is a scripting-free environment for automating load and scalability testing of web, ERP, and server-based software applications. Rational® Performance Tester provides rich and customizable reporting to help you identify the presence and cause of system bottlenecks. Rational® Performance Tester captures the network traffic that is rendered when the application under test interacts with a server. This network traffic is then emulated on multiple virtual users while playing back the test. See Product overview.

• Support for Jaeger traces view

  You can now use the Jaeger to view test logs of tests or schedules that you run from the command-line interface to analyze traces of transactions between distributed services. See Integration of Jaeger with the product.

• A quick view in reports

  You can now add the additional counters on a separate page without editing an existing report to investigate performance issues in detail. See Adding additional counters on a separate page.

• Updates to Dataset CSV Editor

  The browser-based CSV Editor provides additional options that include Find and Replace, Undo, and Redo to organize your data in the dataset in a better way. See Editing datasets.

• Labels for Resource Monitoring sources

  In Rational® Performance Tester, you can now select the data sources in a schedule based on the labels that you added for the data sources in Rational® Test Automation Server. See Enablement of Resource Monitoring services for a schedule.

• Environment variables for Jenkins

  You can now set environment variables on the Jenkins server as inputs to the text fields that are available for Rational® Performance Tester test in a Jenkins build step. See Testing with Jenkins.

• Enhancements to Microsoft Azure DevOps integration

  You can now integrate Rational® Performance Tester with Azure DevOps to run tests as tasks in Azure DevOps pipelines by using the IBM Rational Test Workbench extension that is available in the Visual Studio Marketplace portal. See Integration with Azure DevOps.

• Enhancement to performance reports

  • The Overall page of the performance report is updated to show the Page VPs, Page Element VPs, Page Status Codes, Page Element Status Codes, and Page Health information in an individual chart and the information about the overall verification point in a pie chart. See Overall page.

  • The Resources page of the performance report is updated to show the resource counters information in front of their Resource Monitoring source name. The Performance Summary table now shows the Type of the source and Name of the resource counter in two different columns. See Resources page.

  • You can now view and monitor the counter information generated by the custom code on a graph when the custom code starts in the test run. See Adding custom counters to reports.

• Enhancements to SAP GUI

  Most of the steps are automated now when you record SAP tests by using an SAP batch input test recording wizard. See Recording a SAP batch input test.

• Properties Verification Points in Service Test

  You can now add verification points for the properties in a test response when you record a service test or after you record the service test. See Adding properties verification points to a test response.

• Support for Text message in WebSphere MQ protocol configuration

  After you create a WebSphere MQ protocol configuration, now you can change the message format by selecting the Text Message check box in the Message Structure. See Creating a WebSphere MQ protocol configuration.

For information about hardware and software compatibility, go to the Software Product Compatibility Reports site and complete the on-screen instructions to generate the detailed system requirements document for your product.

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, you must follow the directions in the download document at Rational® Performance Tester V10.1.0.

For installation instructions, see Installation of the product by using Installation Manager.

Known issues

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

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

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.

• For contact information and guidelines or reference materials that you will need when you require support, read the IBM Support Guide.

• For personalized support, including notifications of significant upgrades, subscribe at Product notification.

• Before you contact IBM Rational Software Support, gather the background information that you will need to describe your problem. When describing 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.