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. It 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 you play back the test. See Rational Performance Tester overview.

• Enhancements to the Jenkins plugin

  You can now define the build parameters during the configuration of either Freestyle or Pipeline projects in Jenkins. You can then use those build parameters to run the Jenkins job. See Build parameters for Jenkins.

• Support to show or hide SAP GUI during the test runtime

  You can now change the behavior of the display of SAP GUI during the test run time irrespective of preferences that you configured in GUI on execution section. See Changing preferences for SAP test generation.

• Support to modify regular expressions for SAP Object Identifier

  You can now modify the identifier of an SAP script object by updating the regular expression in the SAP GUI Object Information section. See SAP set details.

• Enhancement to test reports

  You can now copy the contents of the table, which is in the HTML format, from the web analytics reports by using the Copy icon . See HTTP performance test reports.

• Support for the Application Performance Management (APM) in a schedule

  You can now use AppDynamics application with Rational® Performance Tester to enhance the data collection by adding filters based on HTTP headers that you used in tests. See Using Application Performance Management in a schedule.

• Bug fixes

  Fixed the customer-reported and internally found defects.

Deprecated capabilities

You can find information about the capabilities that are deprecated in this release and are planned for a removal in a future release.

You can contact the IBM Client Support team if you have any concerns.

• Support for the following operating systems is deprecated:

  • Windows Server 2016

• Support for the following virtualization management is deprecated:

  • Docker Compose 1.29

• Support for the following browsers (for recording and playing back tests) is deprecated:

  • Google Chrome 91 to 96

  • Microsoft Edge 91 to 96

  • Mozilla Firefox 89 to 92

• Support for the following software is deprecated:

  • Eclipse Runtime Environment 4.7

  • Eclipse Runtime Environment 4.7.3.1

  • Eclipse Runtime Environment 4.8

Capabilities removed

The following features that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are now removed in this release:

• Support for the following operating systems is removed:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5

• Support for the following virtualization management is removed:

  • Docker Community Edition (CE) 19.3

  • Docker Compose 1.25

  • Docker Compose 1.26

  • Docker Compose 1.27

• Support for the following browsers (for recording and playing back tests) is removed:

  • Apple Safari 12 to 13

  • Google Chrome 84 to 90

  • Microsoft Edge 89 to 90

  • Mozilla Firefox 78 to 88

  • Mozilla Firefox ESR 78

• Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (for viewing performance reports and datasets) is removed.

• Support for the following software is removed:

  • JMeter 5.3

  • IBM® Rational® Team Concert 6.0.6

  • IBM® Rational® Quality Manager 6.0.6

  • IBM® UrbanCode Deploy 7.0.2

  • IBM® UrbanCode Deploy 7.1.1.1

  • IBM® UrbanCode Deploy 7.1.2.1

  • Jenkins 2.235.1

  • Jenkins 2.263.3

  • Jenkins 2.277.4

  • Jenkins 2.289.3

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, you must follow the instructions provided in the download document at Rational® Performance Tester 10.5.0.

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

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 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.