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Release Notes
This document includes information about What’s new, installation and upgrade instructions, known issues, and contact information of IBM Customer Support.
Product description
You can find the description of IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server.
What's new
You can find information about the features introduced in this release of Rational® Test Automation Server.
Installing and upgrading
You can find information about the installation and upgrade instructions for Rational® Test Automation Server.
Known issues
You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of Rational® Test Automation Server.
Contacting IBM Rational Software Support
You can find information about Contacting IBM Rational Software Support.
System Requirements
This document includes information about hardware and software requirements for IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server.
Getting Started Guide
This guide provides an overview of IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find the task flows to get you started with Rational Test Automation Server. This guide is intended for new users.
Server overview
IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server brings together test data, test environments, and test runs and reports into a single, web-based browser for testers and non-testers.
Task flow: Test runs and results
You can use the task flow diagram to get started with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. After you install the software, you can complete the tasks in sequence to run test assets in Rational Test Automation Server and view and analyze the test results.
Accessibility features
Accessibility features help users who have physical disabilities, such as visual and, hearing impairment, or limited mobility, to use the software products successfully.
Administrator Guide
This guide describes how to install the IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server software.
Installation of the server software
To get started working with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server, you must first install the server software.
Server software upgrade methods
When you want to use the enhanced functionalities of Rational® Test Automation Server, you must upgrade Rational Test Automation Server to the latest version.
Migration of user data
You can find information about the migration limitations and methods when you want to migrate data such as projects, test resources, configuration details of integrated applications, and so on. You can migrate data that is generated in an earlier version of IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server after you upgrade to or install the latest version, and then use that data in the latest version.
Backup and restoration of the server data
You must back up all your server data before you uninstall the current version of the server software or upgrade to the latest version of the server software. You must back up the server data to avoid data loss or inaccessibility of data.
Uninstallation of the server software
When you no longer require Rational® Test Automation Server, you can uninstall the server software. You can uninstall the server software depending on the platform on which you installed the server software.
Configuration of the server software
You can find information about the tasks that you must perform after you installed the server software to configure Rational® Test Automation Server.
Team space administration
You can find information about team spaces including the initial team space on IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server along with the tasks that you can perform to administer a team space.
Test Author Guide
This guide describes how to create test assets in Rational® Test Automation Server and publish test assets to the Git repository that you have configured. You can also edit existing test assets that are in the repository added to your project. This guide is intended for testers and test managers.
Edit branch overview
When you want to create or modify dataset in Rational® Test Automation Server, you must use an Edit branch.
Datasets overview
A dataset provides tests with variable data during a run. The test that uses a dataset at run time replaces a value in the recorded test with variable test data that is stored in the dataset.
Test Execution Specialist Guide
This guide describes tasks that you must complete before you can configure and run tests in Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find information about configuring runs for the different test types that are supported. You can also find information about other tasks that you can perform on the Resource Monitoring Service, Virtualization, and Integrations with third-party applications. This guide is intended for testers or test execution specialists.
System modeling
In this topic, you can find information about using the system model feature. You can also find the tasks that you can perform to create a system model. You must configure a repository to save the system model that you created for the application under test.
Prerequisites to running tests
Before you can run a test asset in a project on Rational® Test Automation Server, you must read the information about the different tests assets. You can add a remote static agent or Docker host to the project and then select it as an alternate location to run the test assets.
Management of agents
You can find information about managing performance agents that you install on remote computers and then configure the remote agents to register with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. After the agents are registered, you can add them to your projects and then select them as locations to run tests.
Management of Docker hosts
You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on remote Docker hosts. After you set up a remote Docker host, you can register the Docker host with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. You must then add the registered remote Docker host to your project before you can run tests on the remote Docker host location.
Management of remote Kubernetes clusters
You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on remote Kubernetes clusters. After you set up a remote Kubernetes cluster, you can register the external cluster with a team space on IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. You must then add the remote cluster to a project before you run test assets or resources on the remote Kubernetes cluster.
Test run configurations
You can configure and run tests in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server after you add the test resources to your project in your team space.
Configuration of a scan of an application code
You can use Rational® Test Automation Server to scan your application code for security vulnerabilities similar to using the HCL AppScan CodeSweep plugin to scan code in Visual Studio.
Management of running tests
Find information about the tasks that you can perform on a test that you configured for a run either while it runs or after it completes the run.
Management of virtualized services
You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on and manage the virtualized services that run on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can start or stop the virtual services that are connected to Rational Test Automation Server. You can view the routing rules and usage statistics of virtualized services, agents, or intercepts that are connected to Rational Test Automation Server.
Test results
After the tests, Suites, or schedules are run and completed, you can view the results and open the reports in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to analyze the verdict, the performance, and statistics. You can also re-execute tests and schedules from the Result page with the same commit id.
Resource monitoring
When you apply load to a system under test, the amount of resources consumed by your system is increasing. If the capacity of the resources does not match the load, you can see performance issues in the results. Resource monitoring in Rational® Test Automation Server helps you monitoring the resources of a system and establish the performance metrics and usage data of the system. Thus, you can observe the health of these resources while a schedule is running.
Configuration of a change management system
When you use any application to create and track defects (bugs), issues, or other work items, you can configure the application as a change management system on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can then create defects (bugs), issues, or other work items without the need to open your application.
Integrations with other applications
You can integrate certain applications with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to run tests, view the test results, and create defects.
Managing access to the server
Desktop clients and third-party integrations use offline user tokens to connect to Rational® Test Automation Server.
Working with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server REST services
When you want to use the IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server REST APIs in your test automation scripts, you can view the REST APIs that are exposed by IBM Rational Test Automation Server. You can also run the APIs from within your project in IBM Rational Test Automation Server.
Test Manager Guide
This guide describes how to manage and track your overall test effort. This guide is intended for test managers.
Team space management
You might want to become a team space member, add members to your team space, change a user role in a team space, modify the team space, or delete a team space.
Test assets and a server project
Rational® Test Automation Server projects manage access to your test assets, which are stored in a Git repository. Projects are maintained in a team space. Projects are either public by default or private. Private projects are not discoverable by other users. You can either add your own project or you can request to be a member of another public project.
Managing repositories
After you create a project in Rational® Test Automation Server, you can add repositories that contain test assets and resources to the project. You can also change the repository details, update the user credentials of a repository, delete a repository, create a webhook for the configured repository.
Protecting API test assets by using secrets
Secrets are key-value pairs that are created for your project in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server under a secrets collection. You can create secrets collections for your project that enable you or members in your project to use secrets at test runtime either in Rational Test Automation Server or in desktop clients.
Managing an encrypted dataset
You can use encrypted datasets to limit access to confidential information such as account number or passwords. You can arrange data by an appropriate category so that project members can use datasets more effectively in certain tests and protect them.
Managing notifications
IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server provides a feature to display notifications for different events within the user interface (UI) of Rational Test Automation Server. You can configure an SMTP server on Rational Test Automation Server when you want Rational Test Automation Server to send out notifications about the different events as emails to the subscribed users.
Troubleshooting
This guide describes how to analyze and resolve some of the common problems that you might encounter while you work with Rational® Test Automation Server.
Troubleshooting issues
You can find information about the issues or problems that you might encounter while working with Rational® Test Automation Server. Details about issues, their causes and the resolutions that you can apply to fix the issues are described.
All Guides (PDF)
You can find the link to view or download the content of the release notes, system requirements, and persona guides of Rational® Test Automation Server as a PDF file.
Security Considerations
This document describes the actions that you can take to ensure that your installation is secure, customize your security settings, and set up user access controls.
Notices
This document provides information about copyright, trademarks, terms and conditions for the product documentation.