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Rational® Performance Test Server
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.
Technical Tester Guide
Typically, a user with the Integration Tester role is also responsible for performance testing. This guide lists all such topics.
Creating and running performance tests
This topic describes how to create, configure, and run performance tests.
Creating performance tests
A performance test is created within a Rational® Integration Tester project.
Execution
Select the root of the performance test in the configuration tree to display its configuration details, as shown below.
Load profiles
The load profile defines the way in which the tests run (that is, the rate of speed at which new test iterations are started).

Rational® Performance Test Server
- 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® Test Virtualization Server.
- Getting Started
  This guide provides an overview and describes the tasks to get you started with IBM® Rational® Performance Test Server.
- Administrator Guide
  Typically, a user with the administrator role is responsible for certain tasks including installation, configuration, and integration of the product. This guide lists all such topics.
- 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.
  - Technical Tester Guide
    Typically, a user with the Integration Tester role is also responsible for performance testing. This guide lists all such topics.
    - Creating and running performance tests
      This topic describes how to create, configure, and run performance tests.
      - Before creating performance tests
        Agents (Rational® Integration Tester Agent) are required on the computers that will run IBM® Rational Integration Tester tests and the probes that monitor the systems.
      - Creating performance tests
        A performance test is created within a Rational® Integration Tester project.
        Execution
        Select the root of the performance test in the configuration tree to display its configuration details, as shown below.
        Load profiles
        The load profile defines the way in which the tests run (that is, the rate of speed at which new test iterations are started).
        Configuring parameters
        The data set must contain two columns that will be used by the profile.
        Configuring statistics
        The Statistics options define the time interval during which probe statistics should be collected.
        
        Configuring references
        You can configure a performance test to run scenarios, which are collections of stubs, that are available on the IBM® Rational® Test Control Panel domain associated with your Rational Integration Tester project.
        Configuring probes
        The Probes tab (on the Config tab) is used to configure which probes to run during the test, and where to run them.
        Adding distributed tests
        You can add distributed tests to a performance test.
        Log Measurement action (optional)
        With the Log Measurement action, you can periodically record custom data, that is, data that is not provided by test engines and probes, as a performance test runs. The recorded data is stored in a database and is used to generate performance charts. Each item of data that is recorded is called a counter. Attributes are used to identify the counters. A UTC time stamp is stored with each set of counters.
      - Performance tests
        Performance tests are executed in Rational® Integration Tester in the same way and from the same perspectives as any other test resource.
      - Troubleshooting: Running a performance test with a MySQL database
        You can troubleshoot an issue that you encounter while you run a performance test with a MySQL database.
    - View test results
      This topic describes how to work with IBM® Rational® Performance Test Server charts in the Results Gallery perspective.
    - Deploying probes
      A Rational® Integration Tester probe measures variables from a particular component in the system and reports back its findings for processing and storage.
  - Integration 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. 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.

Load profiles

The load profile defines the way in which the tests run (that is, the rate of speed at which new test iterations are started).

You can use this type of load profile to test a gradual increase of load on a machine, instead of immediately starting with a large load. For example, you could have a performance test with multiple iterations, and start the first iteration at 1 transaction per second. You could increase the speed of each iteration of the test by 1 transaction per second, so that the second test iteration would run at 2 transactions per second, the third iteration at 3 transactions per second, and so on.

The following table describes the two available load profile options.


Load Profile Option	Description
Constant Growth	This profile starts tests at a given rate of speed, and increases the rate by a fixed amount for each new test phase. The rates are defined within the details of the individual tests. The parameters available for constant growth are the Number of test phases (minimum of 1) and the Phase duration, or the number of seconds each test phase should last.
Externally Defined	When using the Externally Defined profile, the load is extracted from a test data set that has been previously configured within the project. This enables greater flexibility because the duration of each test phase can be different, as can the test rate.

Note: Remote test data can be pulled from the controller to the agent, but only for test data stored within the project, and only for file and Microsoft™ Excel data sources.