Release notes for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester

This document contains information about What's new, installation, known issues, and contact information of IBM Support.

Contents

Product description

Rational® Integration Tester is an integration testing and virtualization tool that includes capabilities to automate and run tests earlier and more often to find problems sooner in the development cycle. See Rational Integration Tester overview.

What's new

You can find information about the features introduced in this release of Rational® Integration Tester.

The following sections list the new features, enhancements, or other changes made in this release.
  • Rational® Test Automation Server

    For information about Rational® Test Automation Server, see Release notes.

  • Rational® Test Control Panel
    • Tools page

      The list of agents changed for a release was updated. Review the Tools page of Rational® Test Control Panel to see each tool and the version that it was last changed.

    • Rolling back of Rational® Test Control Panel is not supported

      Previously, IBM® Installation Manager allowed you to rollback Rational® Test Control Panel. The rolled back version was unable to be started because the workspace was from a later version. Rolling back Rational® Test Control Panel is now not supported by Installation Manager.

      See Installation considerations for Rational Test Control Panel.

    • H2 Database upgrade

      The version of H2 database that Rational® Test Control Panel used for storing Virtual Service, Scheduling and optionally metrics data was updated.

      When you install or upgrade Rational® Test Control Panel against an existing workspace, you can expect a longer duration for the operation and are informed about the migration of existing resources to the new database format. The location of the migrated resources is also indicated by the installer.

      See Installation considerations for Rational Test Control Panel.

  • Integration with HCL® AppScan

    You can now run IBM® Rational® Integration Tester so that HTTP traffic is consumed by HCL® AppScan enabling scanning for security vulnerabilities.

    See Security vulnerabilities testing by using HCL AppScan.

  • Technologies
    • Support for Apache Camel 3.x

      Support is now enabled for Camel 3.x transports that replaces the previously supported Camel 2.x transports. You can now test the technologies that are supported by Camel versions up to and including 3.14.x.

      See Prerequisites for testing the technology endpoints supported by Camel.

    • Default isolation level of a Apache Kafka consumer is changed

      The default isolation level for messages that are read by a Kafka consumer in Rational® Integration Tester is set to read committed messages. If you want to change the default level so that the consumer reads the uncommitted messages, you must set the -Dgreenhat.kafka.consumer.extra property as a JVM argument in either the Library Config file or the IntegrationTester.ini file.

    • Support for using secured Active Directory

      Previously, when you used Active Directory as the Authorization Realm for a project, you were able to create an unsecured connection.

      You can now create a secured connection with Active Directory by using the SSL option. You can opt to trust a specific certificate, or all the certificates that are presented by the Active Directory Domain Controller.

      See Project settings.

    • Support to create test data as a CSV file

      Previously, you were able to create test data by using tags in tests as an Excel spreadsheet. You can now create test data from tests as a CSV file.

      See Creating test data from tags in a test.

    • Added REST APIs for scheduled tests

      REST APIs are added that enable you to work with scheduled tests on operations such as list the scheduled tests, run scheduled tests, modify or delete a scheduled test. For details see the Swagger documentation accessible from the Rational® Test Control Panel URL.

    • Improved the logging when results database is not available

      When you open a project that has a results database configured, and the results database is unavailable, a stack trace is no longer displayed in the log.

    • Improved logging of test actions

      Previously, the output of test actions, including those from scheduled tests, were included in both results and the application log files making reading of the agent logs tedious.

      Rational® Integration Tester Agent is enhanced to separate the logging for test actions and the logs are now only to be found in the results and the engine logs.

    • Enhanced column width to auto-adjust in the SQL Query action definition dialog box

      Previously, when you built the actions for the query results in the Store or Assert tab of the SQL Query action definition dialog box, the column names were restricted to a fixed column width. Now, IBM® Rational® Integration Tester is enhanced to adjust the column width to match the characters in the column name, which lets you view the complete column name.

    • Viewing test run results on the Azure test plans dashboard

      When you use the IBM® Rational® Integration Tester Azure extension in Azure pipelines to run tests on Rational® Integration Tester, you can view the test results on the Jobs page.

      If you want to view the results of the test runs on the test plans dashboard, you must set up test plans with test cases for your project in Azure. You must also provide details about the Azure server, your personal access token, the Azure project, the test case, and the test plan while you configure the test run for the test results to display on the test plans dashboard.

      See Running tests in an Azure DevOps pipeline.

Deprecated capabilities

You can find information about the capabilities that are deprecated in this release and are planned for a removal in a future release.
Note: You can contact the IBM Support team if you have any concerns.
  • The following operating systems or supported softwares are deprecated in this release:
    • Atlassian JIRA 6.x

    • HP ALM 12.2 and 12.5

    • HP Quality Center 12.2 and 12.5

    • IBM Tivoli APM 7.3

    • MicroFocus ALM 12.6

    • MicroFocus Quality Center 12.6

    • Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012

    • OSLC CM integration

    • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Removed capabilities

Support for the following operating systems or supported software that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are removed in this release:

Support for the following operating systems or supported software that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are removed in this release:
  • Docker 19.03

  • IBM Rational Quality Manager 5.0

  • IBM Rational Team Concert 5.0

  • IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0

  • IBM Websphere SI Bus 8.0

  • macOS Mojave 10.14

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2016

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3

  • Software AG webMethods Integration Server 9.10 and 9.12

  • TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks 5.12.0

  • TIBCO Enterprise Message Service 6.0.1, 6.3, and 7.x

  • UrbanCode Deploy 6.1 and 6.2

  • Windows Server 2016

Installing and upgrading

You can find information about the installation and upgrade instructions for IBM® Rational® Integration Tester.

Installing Rational® Integration Tester

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Integration Tester.

Installing Rational® Test Control Panel

For information about installation, see Installing Rational Test Control Panel.

Upgrading Rational® Integration Tester

If you use Installation Manager, you can find the upgrade requirements in Rational Integration Tester upgrade information and requirements.

Upgrading Rational® Test Control Panel

If you use Installation Manager, you can find the upgrade requirements in Rational Test Control Panel upgrade information and requirements.

Known issues

You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of Rational® Integration Tester.

Table 1. Release documents - Fix list and known issues
Product Download document Knowledge base
Rational® Integration Tester Release document Knowledge articles

Known problems are documented in the download document for each product and in the form of individual technotes in the Support Knowledge Base:

Note: Starting from 9.5.0 a single fix list document and a single download document is used for all products.

The knowledge base is continually updated as problems are discovered and resolved. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to problems.

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

  • For contact information and guidelines or reference materials that you might need when you require support, read the IBM Support Guide.

  • For personalized support that includes notifications of significant upgrades, subscribe to Product notification.

  • Before you contact IBM Rational Software Support, you must gather the background information that you might need to describe your problem. When you describe a problem to an IBM software support specialist, be as specific as possible and include all relevant background information so that the specialist can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
    • What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
    • Do you have logs, traces, or messages that are related to the problem?
    • Can you reproduce the problem? If so, what steps do you take to reproduce it?
    • Is there a workaround for the problem? If so, be prepared to describe the workaround.