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 Rational Performance Tester overview.

• Removed option to discard time measurements for unhealthy transactions from preferences

  Previously, you were able to select the option to discard time measurements for unhealthy transactions in the Test Execution Preferences (Windows > Preferences > Preferences > Test > Test Execution). You can now select the option in the Details tab of a schedule. See Schedule properties.

• Enhancements to address the reporting of failed requests

  Previously, Rational® Performance Tester did not include the response times in the performance reports when the primary requests failed, and this might have caused the reports to be misinterpreted. Rational® Performance Tester is now enhanced as follows:

  • The response codes are included in the response code verification points as the default option. You can disable the default option from the preferences, if you want the response codes to be ignored.
  • The option to discard the response times for the pages that fail is now provided for a schedule. Rational® Performance Tester reports the response time for unhealthy pages as the default option.
  • The Performance report summary displays the healthy pages recorded as a percentage.

• Viewing the Page Details and Page Element Details report

  You can now view two new reports namely, Page Details and Page Element Details. These reports are added to the HTTP Performance report. In the Page Details report, you can view the summarized statistics of every page. In the Page Elements Details report, you can view the summarized statistics of page elements. See Performance report.

• 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.

Removed capabilities

No capabilities were removed in this release.

To download the product from IBM® Passport Advantage®, you must follow the instructions provided in the download document at Rational® Performance Tester 10.5.1.

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.