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Rational® Performance Tester
Test Author Guide
This guide describes how to create test scripts in Rational® Performance Tester and enhances tests by applying different test elements such as dataset, variables, and verification points. This guide is intended for testers.
Creating tests
To create a test, you record representative interactions with an application.
Recording service tests
When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with the service, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing. You can record a test session by invoking service calls with the generic service client or by using an existing client. You can also create a service test manually or from a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) model.
Preparing to record a test for the HTTP/2 service
To test a web service that is based on the HTTP/2 protocol, record a test by using the SOA extension of Rational® Performance Tester. Before recording the HTTP/2 service, follow the procedure in this topic to configure your computer.
Optimizing HTTP/2 tests for SOA
HTTP/2 tests require a lot of CPU and memory resources. When you apply load on HTTP/2 tests using computers that do not have enough resources, the tests might fail. You might want to configure or tune the computers that run HTTP/2 tests.

Rational® Performance Tester
- Release Notes
  This document contains information about what's new, installation instructions, known issues in IBM® Rational® Performance Tester, and contact information of IBM Customer Support.
- System Requirements
  This document includes information about hardware and software requirements for IBM® Rational® Performance Tester.
- Getting Started
  This guide provides an overview and describes the task flows to get you started with Rational® Performance Tester. This guide is intended for new users.
- Tutorials
  This section contains the tutorials which explains the main features of Rational® Performance Tester.
- Samples
  This section describes about the sample project which can be used with Rational® Performance Tester to test the functionality of an application.
- Administrator Guide
  This guide describes how to install Rational® Performance Tester. After you install the product, 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 in Rational® Performance Tester and enhances tests by applying different test elements such as dataset, variables, and verification points. This guide is intended for testers.
  - Creating tests
    To create a test, you record representative interactions with an application.
    - Performance testing tips
      Use these tips to make IBM® Rational® Performance Tester run faster and more efficiently. These tips do not apply to IBM Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality.
    - Creating a project
      The tests that you create, and the assets associated with the tests, reside in a project on your desktop. You can create the project separately, or you can simply record a test, which automatically creates a project named testproj.
    - Recording HTTP tests
      When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with a web-based application, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing. You can record tests from Internet Explorer (which is the default on Windows™) or from another browser.
    - Recording SAP tests
      When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with the SAP server, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing. You can record tests from the SAP GUI. You can also record SAP batch input tests that can be used to produce a heavy load on the server while minimizing the processing requirements for virtual testers.
    - Recording Citrix tests
      When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with the Citrix server, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing. You can record a test session in the Citrix XenApp client.
    - Recording service tests
      When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with the service, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing. You can record a test session by invoking service calls with the generic service client or by using an existing client. You can also create a service test manually or from a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) model.
      - Service testing guidelines
        Before you can test a service, you must set up your test environment and incorporate these guidelines in order to produce reliable tests.
      - Verifying WSDL syntax compliance for JMS services
        Various Java™ Message Service (JMS) providers vary in the syntax used for describing services. Before testing JMS services, you must ensure that Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files comply with the requirements of the tool.
      - Configuring the environment for SOAP security
        SOAP security profiles require access to the libraries that implement encryption, signature, and other security algorithms that transform the XML messages before sending and after receiving them. You must prepare an environment with these libraries to use SOAP security, set the class path of the Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE) that Eclipse uses, and set the class path of the virtual machine that the Agent Controller uses.
      - Recording a service test with the generic service client
        You can record a service test by invoking service requests with the generic service client. After you have sent the requests and received the responses from the service, select the results in the History section of the generic service client to generate a test. If you do not have access to a dedicated client for the service calls, the generic service client is the easiest way to generate the calls and to record a test.
      - Recording a service test through a client program
        You can record tests for SOAP-based, XML, plain text, or binary services with any client program that uses the HTTP protocol. To record the test, the recorder intercepts the service calls and message returns between the client and the service. You can choose between an HTTP or SOCKS proxy recorder or a low-level socket recorder, depending on the capabilities of the client program.
      - Preparing to record a test for the HTTP/2 service
        To test a web service that is based on the HTTP/2 protocol, record a test by using the SOA extension of Rational® Performance Tester. Before recording the HTTP/2 service, follow the procedure in this topic to configure your computer.
        Optimizing HTTP/2 tests for SOA
        HTTP/2 tests require a lot of CPU and memory resources. When you apply load on HTTP/2 tests using computers that do not have enough resources, the tests might fail. You might want to configure or tune the computers that run HTTP/2 tests.
      - Creating a service test from a BPEL model
        You can use Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) resources from your workspace to automatically generate a set of service tests that corresponds to the paths that are run in a synchronous BPEL model.
      - Creating a service test manually
        You can create a service test without recording by simply adding the test elements as required and manually editing the test element details in the test editor.
      - Creating a service test for WebSphere® MQ
        You can create an IBM® WebSphere® MQ test by adding the test elements as required and editing the test element details in the test editor.
      - Creating a service test for WebSphere Java MQ
        To test Java-based applications, create a service test and add the WebSphere Java MQ messages. You can create a service test by using Generic Service Client option or the New Service Test wizard .
      - Creating an XML call test manually
        You can create a test for a plain XML call over HTTP, JMS, or IBM® WebSphere® MQ, by simply adding the test elements as required and editing the test element details in the test editor.
      - Changing service test generation preferences
        You can change default test generation values by changing the preference settings. The default settings, however, are appropriate for recording in most cases.
    - Recording socket and TN3270 tests
      When you record a test, the test creation wizard records your interactions with the application under test, generates a test from the recording, and opens the test for editing.
    - Digital certificates overview
      The digital certificates feature enables you to run tests against servers that use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for applications that require client-side digital certificates to authenticate users.
    - Kerberos overview
      You can run HTTP tests against servers that use the Kerberos protocol for authentication.
    - Annotating a test during recording
      You can add comments, add transactions, or change a page name while you record a test. The advantage of adding these elements during (rather than after) recording is that you can place the annotations in the test exactly where you want. In addition, because annotations are part of the recorded test, they are regenerated when you regenerate the test. You can also insert split points into a test during record.
    - Recording sensitive session data
      You can keep recording session (.recsession) files to view the contents of a recording or to regenerate tests. However, if a recorded test contains sensitive information, you can choose to obfuscate, or encrypt, text strings in the recsession file.
    - Splitting a test during recording
      You can insert split points when you record a test. Split points allow you to generate multiple tests from a single recording that you can replay in a different order with a schedule.
    - Generating a new test from a recorded session
      You can generate a new test from a recorded session. For example, if you accidentally damage a test during editing, or if you want to change a test preference, you can regenerate the test instead of re-recording it. If split points were inserted in the recording, you can choose to generate a single test without split points.
    - Organizing test assets by type
      By clicking an icon, you can view your test assets in a logical order, in separate folders for tests, schedules, results, locations, and datasets.
  - Editing tests
    After you record a test, you can edit it to include datasets (to provide variable data rather than the data that you recorded), verification points (to confirm that the test runs as expected), and data correlation (to ensure that returned data is appropriate for the corresponding request). You can also add protocol-specific elements to a test. When you edit a test, the modified items appear in italic type. The italic type changes to regular type after you save the test.
  - Compound tests
    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.
  - Simulating services with stubs
    Service stubs enable you to simulate the behavior of an actual service for a wide variety testing or integration purposes.
  - Sending service requests with the generic service client
    The generic service client enables you to send requests to services for which you do not have a convenient client and to view the responses returned by the service.
  - Emulating workloads
    You emulate a workload by creating a schedule and adding user groups/rate runner groups, tests, and other elements to it.
- Test Execution Specialist Guide
  This guide describes tasks that you can perform on schedules, test execution with custom code, and Extending Rational® Performance Tester to support other protocols. This guide is intended for testers or test execution specialists.
- Test Manager Guide
  This guide describes how to keep track of the performance of the application by evaluating the test results. This guide is intended for test managers.
- Troubleshooting Guide
  This guide describes how to analyze and resolve some of the common problems that you might encounter while you work with Rational® Performance Tester.
- Reference Guide
  This guide describes, additional topics to gain more knowledge about Rational® Performance Tester.
- All Guides (PDFs)
  You can find the link to view or download the content of the release notes, system requirements, and persona guides of Rational® Performance 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.

Optimizing HTTP/2 tests for SOA

HTTP/2 tests require a lot of CPU and memory resources. When you apply load on HTTP/2 tests using computers that do not have enough resources, the tests might fail. You might want to configure or tune the computers that run HTTP/2 tests.

CPU Usage

Ensure that the HTTP/2 tests get adequate CPU resources to run. If there are other processes running on the computer and they are not required, you can stop them. For example, the CPU usage statistic in the image below indicates that the other processes (shown in red) on the computer are consuming a lot of resources whereas the test execution process (shown in green) is getting less resources.

CPU Usage

Memory usage and garbage collection

Ensure that enough memory is available for the test execution. You can configure the garbage collector and adjust the memory heap size.

Garbage Collection - Consider using the following values so that the garbage collector does not allocate large amount of temporary memory. By doing so, you are tuning the number of threads allocated for the garbage collector according to the capability of the computer. You apply the values for each location asset of the schedule.

RPT_VMARGS: -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=250 -XX:ParallelGCThreads=6 -XX:ConcGCThreads=3 -XX:GCTimeRatio=19

Java argument for garbage collection

Memory heap - Consider using the following values for memory heap:

RPT_VMARGS: -Xms11024m
RPT_DEFAULT_MEMORY: 22412m

Memory heap

Thread Usage

Ensure that you start load testing with fewer virtual testers and gradually ramp up the workload. This practice helps in observing the changes in the workload, that is, the number of calls per second. In the graph, when the number of calls per second is flat, it indicates that the maximum capacity of the computer is reached and there is no need to add more virtual testers.

Platform tuning

Configure the TCP/Socket capabilities of your system by following these two links:

https://www.eclipse.org/jetty/documentation/jetty-9/index.html#high-load

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56495