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Rational® Integration Tester
Getting Started
This guide provides an overview and describes the tasks to get you started with Rational® Integration Tester.
Testing methodology
By following four basic guidelines, you can incorporate Rational® Integration Tester into your testing methodology. These guidelines drive efficient and expedient integration testing, and they can be applied to your testing process and infrastructure requirements.
Project structure
When an Rational® Integration Tester project is created for the first time, the project folder structure is created on a disk.
Implementing tests
As the number of tests grows, it is important to be able to differentiate tests. If you can deduce information from the test name, you avoid wasting time while searching for a specific test.
Running tests and test suites
You might decide to run tests individually or to create a regression suite and then add your tests to the suite.

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.
  - Rational® Integration Tester overview
    You can use Rational® Integration Tester to create, modify, run service tests, and performance tests.
  - Testing methodology
    By following four basic guidelines, you can incorporate Rational® Integration Tester into your testing methodology. These guidelines drive efficient and expedient integration testing, and they can be applied to your testing process and infrastructure requirements.
    - Test approach
      The IBM® Rational® Test Workbench product suite fits easily into a V-Model approach. The classic V-Model demonstrates each phase in predevelopment and its associated phase in test planning. For example, when the system design is delivered, begin planning for system testing. Testing activities such as design, analysis, planning and execution must happen throughout the entire project life cycle.
    - Test phases
      Apart from being used for driving early test plans, Rational® Integration Tester can be used to shift testing earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) than is traditionally possible with standard test tools that test at the UI level. Soon after you have a local build, you can use Rational Integration Tester to do service unit testing.
    - Building tests
      Rational® Integration Tester separates the task of learning about the system from the tasks of creating test resources, designing (building models), creating and recording test assets, and running tests.
    - Project structure
      When an Rational® Integration Tester project is created for the first time, the project folder structure is created on a disk.
      - Folder structures
        As the number of artifacts grows, a project might start to look disorganized and tests and stubs might become difficult to locate. Adding meaningful logical folder structures means that test artifacts can be organized neatly and found quickly.
      - Architecture school
        Architecture School is the default perspective of Rational® Integration Tester. In this perspective, you build the system to be tested in a simple, graphical fashion, and define the logical and physical system components and their relationships to one another.
      - Implementing tests
        As the number of tests grows, it is important to be able to differentiate tests. If you can deduce information from the test name, you avoid wasting time while searching for a specific test.
        Test data
        Where possible, put test data sets in the project's directory, either under each operation or in a separate data sets folder. This helps with portability and maintenance of your project.
        Creating test templates and test suites
        You can implement several tests with similar logic. When creating tests, define a template if a test is repeatedly created. Test suites are used mainly to construct reusable, packaged regression tests that can be run across multiple environments, or repeatedly within the same environment.
        Running tests and test suites
        You might decide to run tests individually or to create a regression suite and then add your tests to the suite.
        Implementing stubs
        When you implement stubs, you want to consider a few points such as naming conventions and folder structure.
        Stub performance
        Performance usually matters for stubs because they receive requests with a high level of frequency.
  - Service-oriented architecture (SOA) testing
    A SOA consists of business processes that are implemented by linking individual services. The linking can be done programmatically or with tools based on Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). SOA testing can be challenging because there is no GUI; the focus is on testing interfaces and services.
  - Getting started with testing
    You can start using Rational® Integration Tester by completing the preliminary tasks such as creating and running a test, creating and running a stub, recording an HTTP proxy, and running a stub in a Docker container.
  - Rational® Test Control Panel overview
    Rational® Test Virtualization Server stubs designed in Rational Integration Tester are published to Rational Test Control Panel, which holds them in a repository.
  - Rational® Integration Tester accessibility features
    Users who have a physical disability, such as limited vision, can review the available accessibility features to use 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
  While working with Rational® Integration Tester, you might encounter some problems that you can easily troubleshoot.
- Reference Guide
  This guide provides the topics to help the Integration tester use the product by using the user interface, commands or scripts. This guide is intended for Integration testers.
- 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.

Running tests and test suites

You might decide to run tests individually or to create a regression suite and then add your tests to the suite.

Consider the following points:

Always check your environment setting before you run a test or test suite.
Include Log actions in your tests to enable you to debug console output.

If you prefer to run your regression pack as part of a continuous integration (CI) build process, use Apache Ant scripts to run your tests. An example of this is the use of Jenkins.

Take note of the following tips when working with Apache Ant scripts:

Generate Ant scripts for each test regression pack suite you want to run during CI and save them in a folder in the project's directory.
In the Ant scripts, change the hardcoded environment name to a variable that can be substituted at run time. This enables you to run the script in any environment you choose.