Release notes for IBM® Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality

Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality is a scripting-free environment for automating load and scalability testing of web, ERP, and server-based software applications. Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality 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 playing back the test. See Product overview.

• Support to run tests from the Jenkins pipeline projects

  You can now use the Rational® Performance Tester Jenkins plugin to run the test assets from the Jenkins Pipeline projects. See Integration with Jenkins.

• Support to add labels from Jenkins

  You can now add labels to test results when you run test assets from Jenkins by specifying a value in the Labels field. See Configuring the Freestyle project or Creating a pipeline script from Jenkins.

• Support to add labels from Ant

  You can now add labels to test results when you run test assets from Ant by specifying a value for the labels parameter. See Running tests by using Ant.

• Access to properties of a dataset through a custom code

  You can now get the properties of the dataset through custom code. When a test asset is associated with a dataset by using a custom code, you can write the properties of the dataset to the test logs. See Getting the properties of a dataset.

• Support to extract the JSON value from a Reference

  Based on the JSON Path expression that you entered in the Regular Expression field, you can now extract the Reference value. See Selecting a Reference in a response.

• Enhancements to the performance report

  The Errors page of the performance report now displays a graph to show errors against the time that occurred during the playback of the test or schedule. See Performance reports.

• Enhancements to HTTP requests

  You can now provide a name for individual HTTP requests from the HTTP Requests Details pane to use the short or meaningful name for requests. You can view the same name from the Page Elements Performance Report and thus you can sort or trace Requests efficiently. See HTTP request details.

• Support to display response codes in Statistics Session Viewer

  If the test includes requests with various response codes, you can now view those response codes from the Statistics Session Viewer window. You can right-click the test result and select Open With > Statistics Session Viewer > Run > HTTP Detailed Status Code to access response codes.

• Automatic creation of environment variables

  If you use Rational® Integration Tester extension to run integration tests from Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality, then the INTEGRATION_TESTER_HOME and INTEGRATION_TESTER_AGENT_HOME environment variables are now automatically created when you install Rational® Integration Tester 10.2.2 or later.

• Support to record tests by using the Microsoft Edge browser

  After you install Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality on Linux operating system, you can now choose the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser to record the following tests:

  • HTTP tests

  • Service tests when recorded from a browser

• Bug fixes

  Fixed 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 browsers (for recording and playback tests) is deprecated:

  • Mozilla Firefox ESR 68

• Support for the following software is deprecated:

  • SAP GUI 7.5 compilation 2

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:

  • macOS Mojave 10.14

• Support for the following browsers (for recording and playback tests) are removed:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

  • Mozilla Firefox ESR 60

• Support for the following browsers is deprecated:

  • Microsoft Edge 42 and 44

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, you must follow the instructions provided in the download document at Rational® Performance Tester 10.2.2.

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

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.