Release notes for IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server

This document includes information about What’s new, installation and upgrade instructions, known issues, and contact information of IBM Customer Support.

Contents

Product description

You can find the description of IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server.

Rational® Test Automation Server is a server that includes capabilities such as project and role-based security, Docker-based distribution and installation, and running of test cases. For more information about the server, see IBM Rational Test Automation Server overview.

What's new

You can find information about the features introduced in this release of Rational® Test Automation Server.
The following sections list the new features, enhancements or other changes made in this release.

  • Supporting installation of the server software in an air-gap environment

    If your OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) cluster is within a restricted network with no access to the internet, you can now install Rational® Test Automation Server on such OCP clusters by using an air-gapped environment. See Installation of the server software in an air-gapped environment.

  • Creating and maintaining multiple team spaces

    Previously, Rational® Test Automation Server supported only one logical partition as the initial team space. Now, you can create and maintain multiple team spaces in Rational® Test Automation Server. The initial team space is available for all licensed users of Rational® Test Automation Server before you create any other team space.

    You can perform the following tasks in team spaces:
    • Configure licenses or licensed users for each team space.
    • View all team spaces created on Rational® Test Automation Server and the team spaces that you can access from the Team Space Dashboard page.
    • Register Dockers, agents, intercepts, or Resource Monitoring agents with a team space before you use them in your projects of that team space.
    • Add team space members with the following roles:
      • Team Space Owner
      • Project Creator
      • Architect
      • Member
    • Isolate the projects from the users who are not members of the team space.

    See Team space overview.

  • Configure a repository with any default branch in a team space

    Now, you can configure any branch in a repository as the default branch in a team space.

  • Starting or stopping virtual services associated with components

    After you associate virtual services with components in the System Model page, you can then navigate to the Resources or Instances page to either start an instance or stop a running instance.

    See Viewing resources associated with components.

  • Viewing and stopping virtual service instances associated with components

    After you start an instance of the virtual services that are associated with components in the System Model page, you can then navigate to the Instances page to either view the running instance or stop a running instance. You can also view the components that are associated with running instances of virtual services from the Instances page.

    See Viewing running instances of virtual services.

  • Introducing the Concurrent Virtual Services licenses

    A new licensing option, Concurrent Virtual Services, is required when you want to run an instance of a virtual service on Rational® Test Automation Server.

    See Server software licensing information.

  • Viewing running instances associated with components

    After you have associated virtual services with components in the System Model and started instances, you can view the instances that are associated with the components from the Instances page. You can also filter the view to display running instances by using components as a criteria in the filters.

  • Hiding inactive instances from the virtual service Instances page view

    You can now hide the virtual service instances that are stopped or those that failed, from the display on the virtual service Instances page via a single button.

    See Viewing running instances of virtual services.

  • Stopping multiple running instances of virtual services

    You can now stop multiple or all running instances of virtual services from the Instances page.

    See Stopping virtual services.

  • Navigating to the Progress page to view the state of test asset runs

    You can now navigate to the Progress page from the Execution page to view the runs that were started, scheduled, or completed by clicking the Show in the Progress page icon that is enabled for the specific test asset.

    See Viewing the state of test assets.

  • Stopping or Canceling multiple test runs

    You can now stop multiple or all running test assets from the Progress page. You can also cancel multiple or all scheduled runs of test assets from the Progress page.

    See Stopping test runs or Canceling scheduled test runs.

  • Defining resource monitoring sources for a team space

    As a team space owner, you can define resource monitoring sources in the team space so that they can be shared between multiple projects in the team space. During a performance schedule execution with resource monitoring labels, the sources defined in a team space are collected with the sources that are defined in a project whenever they match the provided labels. As a user of a team space, you can use the resource monitoring sources that are defined in the team space.

  • Agents listed for selection based on capabilities

    When you install static agents and add the agents to your project on Rational® Test Automation Server, the agents based on the capabilities that match with the agent specified in the test assets are listed for an override. The agents with the best matching capabilities are listed on the top followed by other agents with mismatched capabilities.

  • Adding categories and properties to user-defined capabilities

    The user-defined capabilities feature is enhanced. Now, you can group user-defined capabilities under categories that you create. You can also add name-value pairs as properties for the capabilities.

    See Working with agent capabilities.

Installing and upgrading

You can find information about the installation and upgrade instructions for Rational® Test Automation Server.
Installing Rational® Test Automation Server

For instructions about installing the software, see Installation of the server software.

Upgrading of Rational® Test Automation Server

For instructions about upgrading the software, see Server software upgrade methods.

Known issues

You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of Rational® Test Automation Server.

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

Table 1. Download documents and technotes
Product Download document Knowledge base
Rational® Test Automation Server Release document Knowledge articles

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.

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

  • 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.