What is IBM Rational Purify?

Rational Purify is another dynamic tool from IBM which is meant for carrying out the analysis of the software systems and applications and to provide help to the software developers in producing a code that is more reliable. 

The IBM rational purify comes with unique capabilities:

1. Memory leak detection: This capability is related to the identification of the memory blocks to which there are no valid pointers.
2. Memory debugging: This capability is related to pin – pointing memory errors which are quite hard to be discovered such as the following:

a)   Points in code where the memory is freed improperly,

b)   Buffer over flow

c)   Access to uninitialized memory and so on.

3. Performance profiling: This capability is involved with highlighting the bottle necks of the program performance and improving the application understanding via some graphical representations of the calls to the functions.
4. Code coverage: This capability involves the identification of the code with the line – level precision that is untested.

- Platforms such as the AIX, solaris, windows, Linux and so on support the IBM rational purify. 

- The code that is developed with the help of the IBM rational purify is not only reliable but also faster. 

- This analysis tool is very well supported by the windows application development environment. 

- It has been observed that the windows applications which have been developed using the rational purify have stood to be quite reliable throughout. - There is no need to provide rational purify with a direct access to the source code.

- This makes it capable to be used with the libraries belonging to the third–parties. 

- Languages such as the .NET, visual C++ etc are supported by the rational purify. 

- The IBM rational purify is known to integrate well with the Microsoft visual studio. 

- Almost all the software systems belonging to the windows family are supported by the IBM rational purify. 

- The corruption in the memory is identified and the debugging time is reduced significantly. 

- The reliability pertaining to the execution of the software is also reduced. 

- Also, the software systems and applications now make a better utilization of the memory. 

- The IBM rational purify comes with the binary instrumentation technology in which the code is instrumented at the level of the object or the byte level. 

- Here, re–linking or the re–compilation of the software system or application is not required for the analyzation of the code. 

- Further, the third–part libraries are also analyzed. 

- With the help of the IDE integration feature, the rational purify can integrate very well with the Microsoft visual studio thus cutting down on the need of switching between different tools having different types of user interfaces. 

- It therefore develops a more productive and cohesive development environment and experience. 

- It helps in the testing as well as the analyzation of the code as it is produced by the programmer. 

- A comprehensive support is provided to most of the programming languages. - The ‘selective instrumentation’ feature of the rational purify enables a user to limit the analyzation of the software to a subset consisting of the modules which together comprise the whole application. 

- This helps greatly in the reduction of the run-time and instrumentation overhead.  

- The reporting to the modules concerned also gets limited. 

- The rational purify can be run from the command line also since it comes with a command line interface. 

- Automated testing frame works are among the rest that are supported by the software system or application. 

- In a way the software developers are empowered in delivering the product with the quality that is expected by the users.

What is IBM Rational Performance Tester?

What is a Rational Performance Tester?

- The Rational Performance Tester was developed by IBM to make the performance testing automated so that quality software could be delivered to the end users. 

- The performance tester is a great way to accelerate the performance of a software system or application without degrading its quality and this is what that matters the most. 

- This is a performance testing tool that has been developed exclusively for the identification of the cause as well as the presence of the software performance bottlenecks. 

- Using this tool, the testers can validate the scalability factor of most of the server and web based applications. 

- Further, it can be very well used for the creation of the tests in a code free style i.e., the need of programming knowledge is eliminated. 

- The test editor of this tool is quite rich in features and using it one can both the detailed and high level view of the performance tests. 

- The test data variation is automated here which means that the custom java code can be inserted possibly for making the test customization more flexible. 

- With the rational performance tester the emulation of the user populations which are quite diverse in nature is possible. 

- Also, it provides you options for flexible modeling at the same reducing the processor and memory foot print.

- If any error is found, it is reported in the real time so that the performance problem can be recognized immediately. 

- The report is presented in the form of HTML web pages in the application window itself. 

- This tool collects server resource data and integrates it with the real time performance data from the application. 

- You can even perform load testing against a number of applications such as:

1. HTTP
2. SAP
3. Sieble
4. SIP
5. TCP socket
6. Citrix and so on.

- It works well on all the windows platforms plus Linux and z/OS. 

- The performance tests can be quickly executed. 

- You can determine what impact the load is having on your software system and application.

- The below mentioned are the basic features of the rational performance tester:

1. Code free testing
2. Root cause analysis tool: It helps you to dig out the root cause and diagnose it.
3. Real time reporting
4. Test data: It reduces the headache of generating the test data by providing you options for generating it from the scripts and data pools etc.

- It comes with a recording frame work which supports the recording of the tests consisting of a SOCKS or HTTP proxy, and service tests along with the socket recorder. 

- You have the privilege of making selections among the Firefox profiles that already exist. 

- Furthermore, it comes with a protocol traffic graph which gives a real time display of the amount of data that has been recorded. 

- There is a test annotation tool bar consisting of support for all the protocols and screen capture annotations. 

- With rational performance tester, it is possible to copy and paste the page elements in the HTTP tests. 

- The data correlation tools can be customized and written using the rules editor. 

- The automatic data correlation can be disabled either fully or partially. 

- All the references in a test can be viewed through a global view. 

- Now a wider variety of conditions can be implemented using the content verification points. 

- The fractional percentages are supported by the user groups. 

- Actions to be taken and messages to be logged can be specified for a particular condition in the case of error handling. 

- Reports can be made more presentable with the help of the custom verification points. 

- Java virtual machines can be used for collecting the resource monitoring data. 

What is Rational Synergy Tool?

A task based configuration management tool was released by IBM called the Rational Synergy Tool. 

What does Rational Synergy Tool do?

- It enhances the development of the software systems and applications. 

- The development process was enhanced in terms of speed and ease by making actual improvements in the collaboration as well as communication among the team members.

- Rational synergy tool prepares a release management platform which is unified change and configurable. 

- It then brings the distributed and global team on this platform. 

- Thus, it helps in accelerating the build management and release processes which in turn amplifies the efficiency of the limited resources that are used in the development process. 

- It also plays great role in the unification of the distributed development teams. 

- All these factors contribute to the improvement of the performance of WAN or wide area network which is important for distant sites and global workers. 

- This has enabled the team members staying in different parts of the world to come together on work on a central data base that is provided by the rational synergy tool over the WAN. 

- This aids in the reduction of the need of simplification of the complex challenges in the development and replication. 

- The Rational Synergy Tool provides a complete solution to assist the organizations in improving the quality of their distributed development processes. 

- The environment provided by the rational synergy tool includes support for both the distributed as well as the centralized modes. 

- This tool comes with a powerful engine which drives the collaboration development, component based development and software reuse. 

- It assists you in achieving the desired resilience targets and scalability factors by integrating with the IBM rational and other partners. 

- The IBM rational synergy tool helps you with the following tasks:

1. Configuration management of the end to end tasks.
2. Baselines management support
3. Advanced release management support
4. Works as a single repository solution by integrating with the IBM rational change for software configuration and change management.
5. Provides advanced support for parallel variants and development.
6. Reduces the productivity and overhead for the software developers.
7. Supports component based development
8. Provides advanced SCM needs
9. Supports global and distributed development.

- IBM rational synergy tool helps you to gain full control over the maintenance activities, document development and software. 

- No matter what size is your team, the rational synergy tool supports all from small to large development teams. 

- Also, in which environment your team is working i.e., whether in a distributed environment or a heterogeneous environment, it really does not matter for rational synergy, it supports all. 

- The process of maintenance of the multiple versions of the files in an archive is all managed by the rational synergy. 

- There are other tools available such as RCS or PVCS or SCCS which do control file versions but they are void of many benefits such as the following:

1. Rule based configuration update
2. Product reproducible
3. Work flow management and so on.

- There is a lot of difference between the version control tools and rational synergy. 

- But the users who have experience with these version control tools should not find it much difficult to make transition to rational synergy. 

- The rational synergy comes with 2 types of interfaces namely:

1. Synergy classic: This interface comes with CM capabilities which are important for admins.
2. Rational synergy: This interface has been developed exclusively for the users who are build managers and developers.

- The rational synergy’s command line interface is applicable for both the UNIX and windows platforms. 

- Rational synergy as a configuration management tool provides a unique and easy way for the creation of a baseline. 

Give an overview of the process of system performance validation with IBM Rational Performance Tester?

IBM brought the rational performance tester in to picture as an effort to automate the rigorous process of performance testing. Automated performance testing was required to make it possible to deliver high quality software to the end users.

- The Rational Performance Tester is a convenient means for accelerating the software system’s performance without impacting its quality. 

- Software performance bottlenecks can be identified very easily with the help of IBM rational performance tester. 

- Not only the presence of bottlenecks but also their causes can be identified.  

- It is important to make predictions regarding the behavior and performance of the software systems and applications under extreme load conditions. 

- Making wrong predictions can get the whole organization, its revenue as well as the customer’s at risk. 

This can prove to be hell devastating in today’s software engineering world where the competition is already soaring high. 

- Hence, a proper testing solution is required that would not only help you validate the performance of your product but also optimize and verify it under a number of load conditions. 

- IBM rational performance tester gives you more than just testing. 

- Using it, the scalability factor of many of the applications can be calculated. 

- The rational performance tester supports code free programming i.e., the programming knowledge is not much required. 

In this article we provide an overview of the system performance validation using the rational performance tester. 

- Performance tests are contained within performance test projects.

- Instead of creating a new project, a test can be simply recorded which in turn will create a project immediately. 

- After a test has been recorded, it can be edited so as to include data pools, data correlation and verification points. 

- Data pools are required for obtaining variable data. 

- At verification points, it is confirmed whether the test is running as expected or not. 

- Lastly the data correlation ensures that appropriate data is being returned for the request. 

- Furthermore, protocol specific elements can also be added to a test.

- The items to which you make modifications appear in italics whenever a test is edited. 

- After saving the test it changes in to regular type. 

- A workload can be emulated by adding user groups and other elements to a new schedule.

- After being done with all the additions to the schedule, it can be run. 

- You can either run it locally or with a default launch configuration. 

- The playback might be slowed down because of the delays in HTTP requests. - The performance results of the application can be evaluated after being generated dynamically during the execution process. 

- After execution, the results can be regenerated for analyzation and viewing purpose. 

- The coding problems which are known to cause disturbances in the performance can be found and fixed using the problem analysis tools. 

- The data regarding the response time breakdown can be obtained using an application that has been deployed in a production environment. 

- Another means for collecting this data is from a distributed application implemented in a testing environment. 

- Resource monitoring data including available network, disk usage, network throughput, processor usage and so on can also be collected and imported. 

- Resource monitoring data is important since one can have a comprehensive view of the system or application and this is helpful in the determination of problems.

- All the collected and imported data can be analyzed and later can be used in the location of the exact cause of the problem that is hampering the system performance.

What is IBM Rational Method Composer product?

One the major products of IBM is the Rational Method Composer or RMC. 

About Rational Method Composer

- This product has proved to be quite reliable in increasing the effectiveness as well as the agility of the software system or application.

- It provides platform that is quite flexible for process management. 

- This IBM product is equipped with the most comprehensive tooling of the software industry. 

- It also comes with the richest process library so as to provide assistance to the companies in the implementation of the effective processes so that they can come up with many successful IT and software projects. 

Characteristics of Rational Method Composer

1. The rational method composer have some very new practices that will surely improve the performance of many of the leading process experience as well as expertise in the following areas:

Ø  Agile development

Ø  Governance and compliance

Ø  Requirements management

Ø  Quality management

Ø  Change management

Ø  Release management

2. It helps greatly in the identification of the improvements that are needed by the mapping practices. The improvements identified by the rational method composer can be adopted in increments and improved also as per the business objectives of the project.
3. The rational method composer offers a choice of over 100 process guidance that are both select-able and customizable and are inclusive of the IBM rational unified process. This guidance can help you in solving common management, business and development problems. 
4. The facility of providing the corrective action and measured results is what makes the rational method composer more user friendly. Such measure let you harness the effectiveness of the practice adoption.
5. With Rational Method Composer you get the privileges for managing, authoring, measuring, evolving as well as deploying the effective processes that are tailor made for your software system or application project needs since it is the leading the eclipse – based tool of the software industry.
6. The rational method composer maintains consistency in driving the results across the whole project with the help of the best practices which have been proven and have been integrated with the following:

Ø  Measurements

Ø  Agile

Ø  Reporting

Ø  Project management tools and

Ø  Services

7. A quantum leap forward is represented by the rational method composer and provides process solutions to IBM for the development of the software systems and applications, agile practices and service management.
8. Rational method composer assists in capturing and maintaining the individuals’ own practices and further combines them with the practices and processes of IBM for achieving maximum result. 

One similarity that we can find in each and every project is that there is always a need to minimize the risk, ensuring the predictable results, delivering the high – quality results on time and so on.

Benefits of Rational Method Composer

- The practices provided by the rational method composer can be re-used for composing the process that is right – sized enough for meeting the specific requirements of the software systems and applications.

- The libraries of the rational method composer consist of the most robust practices.

- These practices are guidance for the software development, governance and management and can be very well applied to domains as well as the processes. 

- The following two libraries are shipped along with the rational method composer:

1. The IBM rational unified process 
2. The IBM practice Library

What are Rational Unified Process building blocks?

Whenever we talk about iterative software development process frame works, the first name that comes to our minds is of the rational unified process. It is not just a single hard coded prescriptive process rather it is quite an adaptable and flexible process frame work. 

This frame work comes with several facilities, the best one being that your organization can tailor it according to their needs. 

What is Rational Unified Process?

- Unified process when specifically implemented is called as the rational unified process. 

- Rational unified process is counted among the best products of IBM and the credit for its development goes to the rational software division.

- The RUP comes with a hyper linked base consisting of the descriptions of several types of activities and a few sample artifacts. 

- A part of the IBM’s rational method composer (RMC) is occupied by the rational unified process.

- It allows the users to customize the process as per their needs. 

What are building blocks of Rational Unified Process?

In this article we are to talk about the building blocks of the rational unified process.

- These basic best practices of the rational unified process were developed as a result of the combination of the experience of many companies. 

- The building blocks are:

1. Iterative development with risk as its primary iteration driver.
2. Management of the requirements.
3. Employment of an architecture based up on components.
4. Visual modeling of the software.
5. Continuous verification of the quality.
6. Controlling the changes

- These best practices are used in the following two ways:

1. For driving the development process of the rational’s products.
2. To be used by the rational’s field teams so as to assist the customers in improving the predictability as well as the quality of the software development efforts.

- The task involves the assembling of the explicit process framework for the field of modern software engineering. 

- The delivery mechanism developed by the objector was based up on the HTML and employed in accomplishing this task.

- This task resulted in the creation of the rational unified process. 

- A set of content elements or the building blocks form the foundation for the rational unified process and give a description of the product that is to be produced and the required necessary skills. 

- They also give a detailed step by step explanation for achieving the specific development goals. 

Now we shall list all the building blocks of the rational unified process and discuss them in detail:

1. Roles: This building block can be defined as set consisting of related skills, responsibilities as well as competencies.
2. Work products: This building block gives the representation of thing that would result when a task would be completed inclusive of all the models and documentation produced during the course of the completion of that task.
3. Tasks: This building block gives a description of the units of works that are assigned to an element from the role which will produce a result that would be meaningful.

There are 9 disciplines in to which the tasks are categorized within each iteration. There are 6 engineering disciplines and 3 supporting disciplines which together make up total 9 disciplines. The 6 engineering disciplines are:

1. Business modeling
2. Requirements
3. Analysis and design
4. Implementation
5. Test and
6. Deployment

The following are the three supporting disciplines:

1. Configuration and change management
2. Environment and
3. Project management

The organization and the management of the above mentioned building blocks need to be solid and flexible in order to make the rational unified process a success which otherwise cannot be achieved. 

What is script assure technology in IBM rational functional tester?

Script assure technology is another key technology used by the IBM’s rational functional tester which is an automated tool developed for functional testing by the IBM’s rational software division. 

- Rational functional tester is usually employed by quality assurance people in order to carry out the regression testing. 

- The test scripts are created with the help of a sophisticated test recorder which includes capturing the actions of the users against the AUT or application under test. 

- From these captured actions, a test script is created by the recording mechanism which is based on .net or java applications. 

- When the version 8.1 of the rational functional tester was released, the scripts started to be represented as a series of the screen shots from a story board that is of a visual nature. 

- The created script is further enhanced using the syntax and standard commands of the language.

- These scripts are then run for the validation of the software system’s or application’s functionality. 

- To say the test scripts are executed in the batch mode so that the test scripts can be grouped together and executed unattended. 

- During the phase of recording, the verification points are introduced by the user for capturing the system with its expected state. 

- Any information regarding the bugs is stored in the logs of the rational functional tester. 

- While the play back process is in progress, an object map is used by the rational functional tester for finding and acting against the interface of the application. 

- However, it is possible that during the development phase the objects might be changed between the time that was taken for the recording of the script and for executing the script. 

- The script assure technology allows the rational functional tester to ignore the discrepancies between the definitions of the objects that were captured during the recording as well as the playback in order to ensure that there is an interrupted execution of the test scripts. 

- This is a factor called the script assure sensitivity which determines the size of the object map discrepancy that is acceptable and this factor can be set by the user. 

- It has been found that developing automated scripts for carrying out the regression testing of the dynamic content of the web pages such as GUI applications is difficult for the testers who are used to IBM rational functional tester.

- Testers tend to develop scripts that are quite re-silient and can be used for testing the values of the dynamic object properties which are not known to have sufficient unique properties even though having sufficient properties lead to problems in the recognition and thus leading to several failures and errors. 

If you understand properly that how the IBM rational functional tester works, its advantages, and how the objects can be recognized during the run time, you can very well develop the scripts that can be used to cope up with the changes and provide results of the regression testing that are informative enough. 

Many of the testers who are freshly introduced to the rational functional tester find the difficulties in the creation of the resilient scripts while simultaneously automating the web based applications. 

With the help of the script assure technology, the scripts can be subjected to play back in the rational functional tester by using the script assure feature which will also help in controlling the object matching sensitivity. 

Object matching sensitivity is a function that relies on a number of factors for the recognition of the objects present in that application. It is important that the properties that were recorded in the object map must match with the object properties so that the properties could be recognized by the rational functional tester.

It is by default that the rational functional tester might recognize an object even if some properties do not match. If a match is not found between the two properties, the object in the application cannot be recognized by the rational functional tester. 

What is object map technology in IBM rational functional tester work?

IBM rational functional tester was developed in the league of automated functional testing tools which could assist the users in the creation of the tests that could mimic the assessments as well as the actions of the human testers. However, till date the rational function tester has found its primary use in the field of software quality assurance for performing the automated regression testing. 

About Rational Functional Tester

- This functional testing tool is used in the process of quality assurance for carrying out the regression testing. 

- The test scripts are created with the help of a test recorder whose function is to capture the actions of users against the AUT or application under testing. 

- This recording mechanism assists in the creation of the test scripts from the actions. 

- The test scripts that are produced using the rational functional tester are either based up on visual basic. NET application or a java application. 

- Eventually, the test scripts came to be represented as a series of screen shots with the release of the version 8.1 of the rational functional tester and formed a visual story board. 

- Using the standard commands as well as the syntax of these languages, they could be edited by the testers. 

- This could also be done by carrying out an act against the screen shots available in the story board. 

- Then the test scripts are ready to be executed by the rational functional tester in order to validate the functionality of the application.

- Usually, the test scripts are executed in the batch mode where there several test scripts have been grouped together and have been executed unattended. 

- The user needs to introduce several verification points while the recording phase is in progress. 

Verification points are introduced so that the expected state of the system can be captured such as the following:

1. A specific value in a particular field.
2. A given property of an object whether enabled or disabled.

- A baseline is captured during recording which is compared with the actual result and if any discrepancy is found between the two, it is noted down by the rational functional tester in its logs. 

- The log then can be reviewed by the tester in order to determine whether the actual software bug or error has been discovered or not.  

What is Object Mapping Technology?

- Object mapping technology or OMT is counted among the key technologies of the rational functional tester. 

- This is actually an underlying technology whose purpose is to find objects within a software system or application and act against them. 

- The test recorder creates automatically the object map by itself whenever some tests are created containing a list of properties that can be used for the identification of the objects during the play back progress. 

- For the rational functional tester to interact with a particular object in a software system or application it should be able to understand the interface of that object. 

- This usually does not pose any problem for the standard objects such as list boxes, buttons and edit fields etc.

- But, in some cases it does pose problems when the application developers try to create their own customs objects in order to meet a certain requirement of the software system or application. 

- Application developers can overcome this problem by creating an object proxy using which they can identify the interfaces to a custom objects in the code. 

- This mechanism is termed as the SDK or software development kit interface. 

- Using it, the users can develop programs in .net or java in order to add the functional testing support for .Net as well as java custom controls. 

What is meant by Rational Unified Process?

RUP or rational unified process - refinement of the unified process has been categorized among the most popular and commonly used iterative software development process frame works. The rational unified process has been a trade mark of the IBM Corporation since the year of 2003 when it was developed by the rational software corporation. 

The rational software corporation has long been recognized as a division of the IBM. 

What is a Rational Unified Process?

- Rational unified process as it sounds is an adaptable process frame work rather than being a single and concrete prescriptive process. 

- The rational unified process serves as a frame work that can be tailored according to the needs and objectives of the software development organizations and the project development teams who are responsible for the selection of the elements of the development process that fit their needs. 

- You can call the rational unified process as a specific implementation of the unified process since it is absolutely right. 

- Rational unified process is a kind of software process product which was acquired by the IBM from the rational software corporation. 

- The rational unified process forms a part of the IBM RMC (rational method composer) using which the whole development process can be customized. 

Based on the experience of the implementation of the RMC for various projects, the below mentioned 6 practices were declared as best practices for modern software engineering:

     1. Iterative development using risk as the primary iteration driver.

     2. Management of the requirements.

     3. Employment of an architecture based on components.

     4. Visual modelling of the software system or application.

     5. Continuous verification of the quality.

     6. Keeping the changes under the control.

Rational unified process contributes greatly in making improvements in the quality of the software system or application and in predicting the software development efforts.

Aspects of Rational Unified Process

The rational unified process is characterized by its following three aspects:

     1. It can be tailored according to the needs that will guide the development process.

     2. It is a tool that can be used for the automation of the whole development process.

     3. It is a service that serves for the accelerated adoption of all the processes and the tools involved.

Rational unified process was actually developed in the year of 1996. The year of 1997 saw the addition of the requirements and the test discipline to the rational unified process. In the year of 1998 again two new aspects were added to the process namely the business modelling and change. Apart from these, some techniques were also added that included:

     1. Performance testing

     2. UI design

     3. Data engineering

With all these techniques the rational unified process was updated to the UML 1.3. the rational unified process constitutes of some set of building blocks that describe the functionality which is to be produced. 

Below mentioned are the main building blocks:

     1. Roles

     2. Work products

     3.  Tasks

Nine disciplines governing the tasks have been defined:

     1. Deployment

     2. Implementation

     3. Requirements

     4. Business modelling

     5. Analysis and design

     6. Test

    In addition to these nine disciplines there are 3 additional disciplines:

    1. Environment

    2. Configuration management

    3. Project management

    

   Like the normal unified process, the rational unified process also consists of the 4 phases namely:

     1. Inception

     2. Elaboration

     3. Construction

     4. Transition

The RMC product has proved to be quite an effective tool for configuring, authoring, publishing and viewing processes with rational unified process incorporated in to it. The above mentioned 6 practices are now recognized as a paradigm in the field of software engineering for designing any software and increasing productivity. The development cycle is said to finish when the product release milestone is reached.