Release notes for IBM® Rational® Performance Tester

Rational® Performance Tester is a scripting-free environment for automating load and scalability testing of web, ERP, and server-based software applications. Rational® Performance Tester provides rich and customizable reporting to help you identify the presence and cause of system bottlenecks. It captures the network traffic that is rendered when the application under test interacts with a server. This network traffic is then emulated on multiple virtual users while you play back the test. See Product overview.

• Enhancements to integration plugins

  The integration plugins are enhanced to provide additional parameters that you can use when you run tests from the integrated product.

  The following table lists the parameters added in Rational® Performance Tester 10.2.3 with the checkmark icon for each of the integration plugins:

  Parameters	Integration plugins
  	Azure DevOps	UrbanCode™ Deploy	MicroFocus ALM	Ant	Jenkins
  Duration
  Exportlog
  Publish
  Publish_for
  Publishreports
  Rate
  History
  Exportstatsformat
  Labels
  Exportstatshtml
  Exportstatreportlist
  Exportstats
  Overwrite
  Configfile
  Results
  Usercomments
  Users

  The following topics provide more information about parameters for each of the integration plugins:

  • Running tests from Azure DevOps as a Pipeline job

  • Configuring the process in UrbanCode Deploy

  • Configuring test scripts in Micro Focus ALM

  • Running tests by using Ant

  • Configuring the Freestyle project in Jenkins

• Viewing test run results on the Azure Test Plans dashboard

  When you use the IBM Rational Test Workbench extension in Azure DevOps pipelines to run performance test assets, you can now view the results of the test runs on the Test Plans dashboard of Azure DevOps. See Running tests from Azure DevOps as a Pipeline job.

• Support to auto-save the load test profile details of test assets

  Rational® Performance Tester now automatically saves the load test profile details of tests, compound tests, vu schedules, and rate schedules.

• Bug fixes

  Fixed the customer-reported and internally found defects.

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.

You can contact the IBM Client Support team if you have any concerns.

• Support for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is deprecated:

• Support for the following virtualization management is deprecated:

  • Docker Community Edition (CE) 19.3

  • Docker Compose 1.25

  • Docker Compose 1.26

• Support for the following browsers (for recording and playback tests) is deprecated:

  • Google Chrome 84 to 90

  • Microsoft Edge 89 to 90

  • Mozilla Firefox 78 to 88

• Support for the following software is deprecated:

  • JMeter 5.3

  • Eclipse Runtime Environment 4.7.3.1

Capabilities removed

The following features that were announced in previous releases as deprecated are now removed in this release:

• Support for the following operating systems is removed:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.2

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.1

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8

• Support for the following browsers (for recording and playback tests) is removed:

  • Google Chrome 78 to 83

  • Mozilla Firefox 60 to 77

  • Mozilla Firefox ESR 68

• Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (for viewing of performance reports and datasets) is removed.

• Support for IBM® Rational® Clear Case 8.0.1 or later is removed.

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, you must follow the instructions provided in the download document at Rational® Performance Tester 10.2.3.

For installation instructions, see Installation of the product by using IBM Installation Manager.

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

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.

• 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.