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Rational® Integration Tester
Rational® Integration Tester reference
Rational® Integration Tester is a scripting-free environment for developing tests for service-oriented architecture (SOA) messaging and business process integration projects. Tests can be built by recording existing system behaviors or from requirements, by entering the data to send and the data that is expected in return.
Schemas
Rational® Integration Tester can handle many types of content. For the product to be able to interpret the variety of content types, it must associate a content format description, or schema with the content.
COBOL Copybooks overview
Use COBOL Copybooks in Rational® Integration Tester to test COBOL data files or the applications that produce and consume them.

Rational® Integration Tester
- Release Notes
  This document contains information about What's new, installation, known issues, and contact information of IBM Support.
- System Requirements
  This document includes information about hardware and software requirements for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester.
- Getting Started
  This guide provides an overview and describes the tasks to get you started with Rational® Integration Tester.
- Administrator Guide
  This guide describes how to install Rational® Integration Tester. After you install the software, you can perform administration tasks such as configuration and integration of the product. This guide is intended for administrators.
- Tester Guide
  This guide describes the tasks that you can perform for testing various domains, technologies, and applications. To enable testing, you must configure and enable the environment for testing.
- Test Manager Guide
  This guide describes the tasks that you can perform for tracking the quality of the application. This guide is intended for Test Managers.
- Troubleshooting Rational® Integration Tester
  While working with Rational® Integration Tester, you might encounter some problems that you can easily troubleshoot.
- Rational® Integration Tester reference
  Rational® Integration Tester is a scripting-free environment for developing tests for service-oriented architecture (SOA) messaging and business process integration projects. Tests can be built by recording existing system behaviors or from requirements, by entering the data to send and the data that is expected in return.
  - Rational® Integration Tester overview
    This section provides an overview of Rational® Integration Tester, including information about projects and files, the Rational Integration Tester user interface, environments, and project settings and preferences.
  - Architecture School
    Use the Architecture School perspective to build a system under test by using the logical, physical, and synchronization views. You can also use this perspective to manage the schemas available in your project.
  - Recording Studio
    With Rational® Integration Tester, you can record events (messages or database interactions) sent to and from the system under test. Use Recording Studio to control what parts of the system should be recorded. These parts could be specific parts of the system infrastructure or specific services using that infrastructure. You can then use the recorded events as a source of tests and other interactions with the system. In Recording Studio, you can record the traffic over a number of different transports.
  - Test Factory
    The Test Factory perspective is one of the main areas in Rational® Integration Tester. You can create all the tests and the required artifacts/data to support them.
  - Test Lab
    You use the Test Lab to execute test assets, repair tests, and open test assets for editing directly from this perspective. You can execute all of the tests, test suites, and stubs that are created in Test Factory.
  - Results Gallery
    You use the Results Gallery perspective to view an execution summary and detailed coverage, error, and performance reports for executed test suites and for test cases that were executed within a suite or as part of a test cycle.
  - Messages
    Rational® Integration Tester can publish and subscribe to messages as part of a test. A message normally consists of two parts: a header and a body. The header usually adheres to a predefined logical construction, while the structure of the body can be more arbitrary.
  - Schemas
    Rational® Integration Tester can handle many types of content. For the product to be able to interpret the variety of content types, it must associate a content format description, or schema with the content.
    - Adding a schema
      You can add a single schema or a directory that contains multiple schemas to the Schema Library view after which you can apply the schema to messages in your tests. You can specify the type of schema to add or use Rational® Integration Tester to determine the type.
    - ISO 8583 schemas: Overview and structure
      Rational® Integration Tester supports the ISO 8583 standard for messages that originate in financial transaction cards.
    - Adding SWIFT schemas
      When you want to apply SWIFT schema to messages in your tests, you can add additional SWIFT schemas to the Schema Library in the Architecture School perspective of Rational® Integration Tester.
    - COBOL Copybooks overview
      Use COBOL Copybooks in Rational® Integration Tester to test COBOL data files or the applications that produce and consume them.
      - Adding Copybook schemas
        You can add a COBOL Copybook schema to the Schema Library in Rational® Integration Tester Architecture School perspective.
      - Applying Copybook schemas to messages
        After you add a Copybook schema to Rational® Integration Tester, you can apply the schema to messages in applicable test actions.
      - Troubleshooting: COBOL copybook schemas
        You can use a workaround to problem that you can encounter after you import a COBOL copybook schema into Rational® Integration Tester.
    - PL/I source file overview
      Use PL/I source files in Rational® Integration Tester to test PL/I data files or the applications that produce and use them.
    - Creating a DFDL schema
      You can use the DFDL schema utility that is provided with Rational® Integration Tester to create a DFDL schema file and apply it to messages. This utility helps you to quickly create a schema with valid format and to specify elements and values by using the DFDL editor.
    - ISO 20022 schema overview
      Rational® Integration Tester supports the ISO 20022 standard, which is the next generation messaging standard for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).
    - Protocol Buffer overview
      Protocol Buffer (also known as protobuf) is a Google framework for efficiently serializing objects for transfer, typically between network endpoints.
    - Creating a Web URL schema
      You can create a Web URL schema to use with REST services by adding URLs to the Schema Library.
    - Creating file schemas
      File schemas can be used to define the contents of one or more files that you intend to write to (publish) or read from (subscribe) in Rational® Integration Tester tests.
    - Applying schemas and formats to messages
      Built-in or custom message formats can be applied to any message within Rational® Integration Tester in the same way that schemas can be applied.
    - Applying Integra message handlers
      If you migrated to Rational® Integration Tester from Solstice Integra Suite, you can apply Integra message handlers to Rational Integration Tester messages.
    - GraphQL schema overview
      Rational® Integration Tester supports the use of either the built-in GraphQL schemas or the GraphQL schemas that you import into Rational Integration Tester when you want to test a GraphQL endpoint.
    - SWIFT messages
      At any given time, Rational® Integration Tester uses a single version of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) message format standard.
    - Changing schemas
      Over time, it is likely that a schema in use for message construction will change. To update the schema in the Rational® Integration Tester project, use the Synchronization view in Architecture School.
    - Analyzing schemas
      You can analyze certain schema resources, such as XSD or WSDL documents, after they are imported into Rational® Integration Tester.
    - Record layouts
      You can use record layouts in Rational® Rational Integration Tester to define a file schema to process and validate messages that use a customized schema or format.
  - Database resources, connections, and bindings
    Rational® Integration Tester can interact with any database that supports connectivity through the JDBC specification. These interactions can be used to extract or update data where necessary, and test data sets can be taken directly from database table content.
  - Identity stores and SSL
    An identity store can group a collection of one or more certificates that can be used in IBM® Rational® Integration Tester to validate and authenticate connections that use SSL. After you create an identity store, you can use it to enable SSL communications in various messaging transports.
  - Scripting within tests and stubs
    You can use scripts in Rational® Integration Tester that include the Rational Integration Tester legacy scripting language, ECMAScript (such as JavaScript™), or any third-party scripting language that you install.
  - External tools
    Rational® Integration Tester is primarily GUI-based, but you can also run or view tests, suites, and stubs outside of the Rational Integration Tester.
  - Test actions
    Actions are the building blocks of a test. A test consists of a series of steps and each step is an action. Actions can be defined for tests and stubs.
  - Formatting and parsing date-time patterns
    For some fields in Rational® Integration Tester, you can define patterns for date-time formatting. Pattern letters are repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation of the date-time information that they represent.
  - The Add Numbers service
    The Add Numbers service, included with Rational® Integration Tester, provides a simple way to generate messages that you can observe with topology discovery or capture in Recording Studio.
- Security Considerations
  You can take certain actions 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 product documentation.

COBOL Copybooks overview

Use COBOL Copybooks in Rational® Integration Tester to test COBOL data files or the applications that produce and consume them.

You can add COBOL Copybooks to Rational® Integration Tester and apply them to messages. Copybooks provide a format that is meaningful to the system under test.

Cobol data files do not contain information about their own organization and record structure. If you have a COBOL data file, but no program capable of writing or reading this file, you cannot correctly interpret the data that the file contains.

The information that describes the physical layout of program data, that is, how the records and fields relate to each other, is stored in a Copybook file. This file is included in all of the applications that process the file.

COBOL copybook files are named with .cbl, .ccp, .cob and .cpy extensions, and typically include one or more level 01 structures. These structures can be made available within Rational® Integration Tester as message schemas that can be used to create or parse the data in files or messages.

COBOL Copybook schemas can be applied to any of the following fields:

Byte array fields, in messages where you can use the Byte Array formatter
Bytes message types, set within the message body when you are using any of the JMS providers
Text messages, which you can format based on the applied schema.

COBOL Copybook schemas have the following limitations:

No support for COPY statements
No support for COMP-4 or COMP-5 types
All types are represented as strings within Rational® Integration Tester
Formatting characters (signs) are included in fields that the user works with
No repeating node support for fields defined by OCCURS clauses

You can overcome many of these limitations by importing the COBOL Copybook as a DFDL schema. See Adding a COBOL copybook as a DFDL schema.