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Rational® Functional Tester
Tutorials
This section contains the tutorials which explains the main features of Rational® Functional Tester.
Tutorials for testing in the UI Test perspective
You can use the tutorials to get started with testing in the UI Test perspective in Rational® Functional Tester.
Lesson 6: Abstracting data by using a dataset
When you record a test, you perform a sequence of steps that you expect a user to perform. When you run this test, it uses the same data that you used during recording. However, in a real-life scenario, although a user might follow the same steps, the data that they enter into the application might be different at different point of time. To vary the data in the test, you use a data pool, which contains variable data. At run time, this variable data is substituted for the actual data in the recorded test.

Rational® Functional Tester
- Release Notes
  This document contains information about what's new, installation instructions, known problems in and contact information of IBM Customer Support.
- System Requirements
  This document includes information about hardware and software requirements for IBM® Rational® Functional Tester.
- Getting Started Guide
  This guide provides an overview of Rational® Functional Tester. You can find the task flows to get you started with Rational Functional Tester. This guide is intended for new users.
- Tutorials
  This section contains the tutorials which explains the main features of Rational® Functional Tester.
  - Tutorials for testing in the UI Test perspective
    You can use the tutorials to get started with testing in the UI Test perspective in Rational® Functional Tester.
    - Lesson 1: Recording a test scenario
      With the UI Test perspective, you can initiate the recording of a specific test scenario on your web application. Typically, you would create smaller test scenarios for better maintenance. When you start a recording, Rational® Functional Tester automatically captures the actions that you do on the web application. To ensure that the recorder captures each action correctly, wait till the web pages are loaded completely. You can later remove this extra ‘waiting time’ (Think time) that is spent in the recording when you play back a test. After you stop the recording, the test is generated.
    - Lesson 2: Adding a verification point
      In this lesson, you will learn how to add a verification point to a test step.
    - Lesson 3: Running the test
      After modifying the test script, you can now run the test to check if the test scenario is played back successfully.
    - Lesson 4: Viewing test results
      The reports display whether the test run was successful. The UI Report is the primary report for a Web UI test. It displays each of the steps with the screenshot of the UI and the overall response time. If a test run fails, the error message is displayed against the step in the report.
    - Lesson 5: Modularize the test script
      In this tutorial, you recorded a test scenario in which you signed in to the web site, browsed for a product, and saw pricing details. In the actual scenario, you would have also recorded how to purchase, check out the product, and sign out of the website. You would have done that to avoid recording the same application multiple times. However, maintaining a big test script with a lot of data can be difficult. After the recording, you can modularize the test script by splitting it at appropriate steps and thereby creating meaningful chunks of test scripts. For example, for the test scenario in this tutorial, you can split the ‘Sign in’ and ‘Choosing the product’ steps and create two test scripts out of it. You can then add these scripts to a Compound Test to run in sequence.
    - Lesson 6: Abstracting data by using a dataset
      When you record a test, you perform a sequence of steps that you expect a user to perform. When you run this test, it uses the same data that you used during recording. However, in a real-life scenario, although a user might follow the same steps, the data that they enter into the application might be different at different point of time. To vary the data in the test, you use a data pool, which contains variable data. At run time, this variable data is substituted for the actual data in the recorded test.
    - Lesson 7: Associating the dataset with the test
      By default, at run time, the data pool values are accessed sequentially. You can specify whether the test uses the data pool values randomly or in a shuffled manner. If you have a long list of data pool values that are used by multiple tests from the same workspace, you can share a data pool.
    - Lesson 8: Running multiple test scripts in a sequence
      You can create compound tests to help you organize smaller tests into scenarios that can then be run end-to-end. You can combine tests from different extensions to achieve end-to-end flow.
    - Lesson 9: Adding a loop
      You will add a loop to the test so that the test is repeated to fetch all of the values from the data pool. Because your dataset has three entries, the test must run at least three times.
  - Tutorials for testing in the Functional Test perspective
    You can use the tutorials to get started with testing in the Functional Test perspective in Rational® Functional Tester.
- Samples
  This section describes about the sample project which can be used with Rational® Functional Tester to test the functionality of an application.
- Administrator Guide
  This guide describes how to install IBM® Rational® Functional Tester software. After you install the software, you can perform administration tasks such as license configuration and integration with other products. This guide is intended for administrators.
- Test Author Guide
  This guide describes how to create test scripts and enhances them by applying different test elements such as dataset, variables, and verification points.
- Test Execution Specialist Guide
  This guide describes how to automate the playback of the tests by using different methods such as Docker, IBM® Cloud Private, Jenkins and so on. The test results can be pushed to Rational® Test Control Panel.
- Test Manager Guide
  This guide describes how to keep track of the performance of the application by evaluating the test results. Following topics cover how you can work with the test results.
- Troubleshooting
  This guide describes how to analyze and resolve some of the common problems that you might encounter while you work with Rational® Functional Tester.
- Reference Guide
  This guide describes the additional topics to gain more knowledge about Rational® Functional Tester.
- All Guides (PDF)
  You can find the link to view or download the content of the release notes, system requirements, and persona guides of IBM® Rational® Functional Tester as a PDF file.
- 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 the product documentation.

Lesson 6: Abstracting data by using a dataset

When you record a test, you perform a sequence of steps that you expect a user to perform. When you run this test, it uses the same data that you used during recording. However, in a real-life scenario, although a user might follow the same steps, the data that they enter into the application might be different at different point of time. To vary the data in the test, you use a data pool, which contains variable data. At run time, this variable data is substituted for the actual data in the recorded test.

About this task

For this tutorial, you recorded a test in which you searched for ‘Rational® Test Workbench’ and saw pricing. Now, you will create a dataset that will consist of Rational® Functional Tester, Rational® Performance Tester, and Rational® Integration Tester. When you run the test, it will also search for these products.

Procedure

To create a dataset:

In the Test Navigator view, right-click myProj and click myProj > New > dataset
In Name, type Productsdataset and click Next.
In Variables (or columns), type 1 for product name.
In Records (or rows), type 3 and click Finish. You entered 3 because your dataset will contain three products in three rows.
You are asked whether to open the dataset editor. Click Yes.
In the dataset editor, click Variable1:String and change the column name to ProductName.
Click each cell and enter data so that your dataset looks like this:
Press Ctrl + S to save the changes.

Results

After creating dataset, you must associate it to the test so that you can substitute the recorded values with the values from dataset.