Installation planning for Rational® Integration Tester Agent

IBM® Rational® Integration Tester Agent can be installed as part of the IBM® Rational® Test Virtualization Server product offering. There are planning requirements for the hardware, software, and installation of Rational® Integration Tester Agent.

Product offerings

Rational® Integration Tester Agent is included in two offerings:
  • Rational® Performance Test Server
  • Rational® Test Virtualization Server

You use the IBM® Installation Manager application to install this product.

The Setup disk includes the launchpad program, which provides you with a single location to start the installation process.

Use the launchpad program to start the installation of software in these cases:
  • Installing from product CDs
  • Installing from an electronic image on your local file system
  • Installing from an electronic image on a shared drive

Hardware and software requirements

For a list of hardware and software requirements for Rational® Integration Tester Agent, see System Requirements.

Review the license information

Before you install Rational® Integration Tester Agent, you must review the license information. You must know the license type that you have purchased to select the mode to install the agent. See Licenses for Rational Test Virtualization Server.

Installation planning

Note: You cannot directly upgrade Rational® Integration Tester Agent from any of the earlier versions to the latest version. You must uninstall the existing version and then install the latest version.

Rational® Integration Tester Agent employs a decoupled, plug-in architecture to provide maximum flexibility for the messaging transport software that you are testing. This architecture also allows the application to load and execute additional components, such as functions, at run time.

The program code for each transport is contained in one or more JAR files that must be reside in the Rational® Integration Tester Agent plug-ins directory. You can make the libraries on which the transports depend available to the application by using Library Manager. (For information about using Library Manager, see Working with Library Manager.) At run time, Rational® Integration Tester Agent loads each available plug-in, making these available from the appropriate menus.

Functions are loaded dynamically as well on a per-project basis. At the root of each project is a folder named classes that contains one or more JAR or CLASS files. The files that conform to the functions interface are made available from within the function action in test sequences.

Note the following network connectivity and deployment requirements:

  • Each computer that runs a test engine instance must have an agent on it to manage these processes, launching the processes when required and shutting them down at the end.
  • Each computer that runs an agent must be able to connect to the database.

Library Manager settings

Library Manager settings are preserved during the uninstall or reinstall process. After the installation of V8.7 or later, run Library Manager at the end of the process and confirm that the settings are correct.

After installation, you must configure the Agent.config file (for example, for Rational® Test Control Panel and IBM® Rational® Quality Manager settings). Copy this file before uninstalling so that you can copy over the values.

Preserving the configuration file

Upgrading the Rational® Integration Tester Agent software or uninstalling an older version to move to a newer version (when the upgrade is not applicable) overwrites the existing Agent.config file. If there are settings in the Agent.config file that must be preserved, for example, IBM® Rational® Test Control Panel domains and environments settings, copy the existing Agent.config file to a temporary location before upgrading. After the upgrade or uninstallation of the software has completed, overwrite the new Agent.config file with the old Agent.config file.