Options for creating test resources

Rational® Integration Tester includes a number of options for automated resource creation, including topology discovery, synchronization, and recording.

The resources used in testing are shown in the following table, along with the methods you can use to create them.

Table 1. Methods of creating assets
Manual Topology discovery Synchronization Recording Studio wizard
Logical and physical transports
Operations
Schemas
Tests
Virtual services (stubs)

Synchronization with an external application or file is the most common method of modeling a system under test. The process automatically adds logical and physical components, dependencies, and interactions. After you have completed synchronization, you can record from any of the transports or operations that it created. For more information, see Building system models by using synchronization.

You can use the Recording Studio wizard to inspect the messages sent to and from a service, as well to create operations, tests, and virtual services. The wizard can create operations and tests at the same time, or operations and stubs at the same time. If the operation already exists, it can create tests only, or stubs only. The wizard always requires a transport, as shown in the first row of the table. For more information, see Using the Recording Studio.

Topology discovery provides an alternative method of creating operations. In addition to creating operations, it can also create logical and physical transports, so it is particularly useful in situations such as those in the following examples:
  • You do not know in advance the information needed to set up the transport, such as hostname and port.
  • You have many hosts available to record and do not want to configure them all manually.
For more information about topology discovery, see Topology Discovery overview.