IBM Rational Performance Tester Reviews

• The graphical Test Results and executive reports
• The improved Load Generation Agent
• The ability to couple test results with resource monitoring results across all application tiers
• The ability to add custom code where needed (for enhanced data correlation for example)
• The ever improving auto-data correlation

It helps the testers quickly and efficiently record tests, and setup schedules (test suites).

The Rational Quality Manager adapter for Rational Performance Tester allows testers to manage, schedule, and execute their Rational Performance Tester assets from Rational Quality Manager.

Comprehensive Rational Performance Tester results allow testers to identify bottlenecks in the systems under test.

I’d like to see a tighter integration with Rational Quality Manager and the Jazz platform. Additionally, making the results/reports more customizable would be useful.

We've been using it for seven years.

When implementing complex solutions like this, you often run into deployment issues during the initial setup. However, upgrades have been very easy and transparent to the testers.

In terms of scalability and stability, it is important to gather your performance test requirements ahead of time so that you can properly design the most stable and scalable solution for the enterprise. For example, how many concurrent virtual users will be run during average and peak times is an important factor when determining the number of agents.

Rational support is responsive and knowledgeable of any issues we run into with RPT.

The initial setup itself was straightforward, but resolving the various issues after deployment took a couple weeks.

The internal Rational Support team is responsible for the Rational tools where I work. I was involved in the Rational Performance Tester redesign, moving to a virtual server architecture, and involved IBM support when necessary. You definitely need to know what you are doing, or have someone who does available.

It helps knowing your usage model, having a performance test plan that includes requirements or projections from the applications to be tested, as well as design details of the test environment. It is more cost-effective buying all your projected licenses up front, as opposed to buying a small number each year to meet your needs.

HP LoadRunner and JMeter were evaluated, and those are good solutions too. The client chose RPT due to the Eclipse IDE and the graphical reports. Additionally, RPT doesn’t really require a lot of custom coding. However, being a Java shop, if custom code is needed we are able to leverage in-house Java developers to help in custom code development if necessary.

With little or no experience, you can try to muddle through the implementation if you have enough time. Otherwise, I suggest involving a consultant who really knows it. Full time support is always preferred (hire an experienced in-house team). Alternatively, hire part-time quick start support; find a good IBM Partner, like A Better Solution (ABS), that has a proven track record in helping organizations spin up on the various Rational tools such as this one.

Virtual Users

I found a couple of SQL bugs and discovered that when we used Rational Performance Tester the response time was longer than normal.

I would expect tool should support all application types, such as mobile, web applications, XML requests, PDF support etc.

I've used it for six years.

There were lots of problems.

There were lots of problems.

There were lots of problems.

7/10.

7/10.

It was complex.

We used a vendor team.

It's too costly.

The tool has lots of limitations.

It is used to capture and generate HTTP tests. The capture process is very easy. After this, we edited the captured transactions to organize them into the sections or transactions we require performance metrics for (i.e. splash page, user authentication, main pageload, logout, etc.). This editing process is easy to perform with the interface provided in Rational Performance Tester Finally, Rational Performance Tester has an import/export feature that has been extremely useful. We have used it to export our complete test library and import it into another Rational Performance Tester server with no loss or issues. This allows for platform test migrations and backup.

We are contracted to administrate and maintain an infrastructure that includes web-based services. Using Rational Performance Tester to capture and create ‘scripts’ to test those services allows our company to provide the client with SLA metrics that measure our performance. Also, the test can provide diagnostic indicators that can help point to issues with sub-services behind the web-based ‘curtain’ (i.e. file download, webmail, page loads, authentication, search, etc).

As intuitive as a product can be, its use could still benefit from a decent set of manuals or guides. It would certainly take much of the guess work out of using and interpreting the product output. If the Rational Software division has produced them, then I can only speculate that maybe they are buried somewhere in the IBM support site.

The person I replaced had been using this for a few years, and I continued to use IBM Rational Performance Tester at the client facility for a further three years. I had never used the product before.

Our client holds the support contract for the IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions V7.4.0.1 (ITCAM-RT) which includes a license for IBM Rational Performance Tester 8.6 (RPT). These products were recently upgraded from the IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions V7.3.0.1 and IBM Rational Performance Tester 8.2.1.

The deployment of RPT 8.2 was easy based on a guide that was provided by a Rational support engineer. I recently used this same Rational Performance Tester 8.2 installation guide to install a new server with RPT 8.6.

After placing a PMR with IBM, you are contacted by a support engineer who is a subject matter expert on the product you opened the PMR on. With the experiences I’ve had with IBM, I would give the support team an 85-90% favorable rating. The customer service skills of all engineers have not been consistent enough for a perfect rating. It can also be difficult to determine support needs when your environment contains multiple integrated products/assemblies (i.e. ITM, ITCAM-RT, etc.)

My arrival on the client site was after the product had already been chosen by the client. I did not participate in the selection/evaluation process that had occurred.

After the product installation, there was no need to change the default application parameters. The default configuration served our purposes ‘out-of-the-box’. The requirement and installation of the IBM certificate to allow the tests to be captured was resolved with IBM RPT support. By creating a “Development”, “Production” and “Archive” project folders, it was very easy to create, test and archive the library of tests that had been created over time.

I performed two Rational Performance Tester deployments using the Windows platform and understandably, each experience can differ. The ITCAM-RT Rational Integration Support was documented in the install guide that it would error and fail unless you install it with a Windows local admin account. My Windows engineer installed Windows Server on a physical server. He then gave me the administrator account and I performed the Rational Performance Tester installation. Next, we joined the server to the domain started the RPT and all was successful. The second install of Rational Performance Tester 8.6 did not work a smooth as the first based on a few steps being rearranged. In this case, the server was built (virtual server this time). The server was joined to the domain and since the group policy would prohibit local admin accounts, we had to install the Rational Performance Tester product through the VMWare console to the server. Next, group policy adjustments had to be made to allow user access to RPT.

Not having been involved in the evaluation or purchase of Rational Performance Tester, I cannot quantify the ROI. I can say that Rational Performance Tester was perfectly suited to provide the means to monitor the availability and performance of our web services.

The majority of issues I have experienced have not been attributed to the product, but to the environment. These issues ranged from test target firewall access, browser security configurations, certificate requirements, domain privileges and group policies. Procuring an administrative guide/manual was impossible, but the IBM website does have many supportive tip and “best practice” guides. Any IBM PMRs that we opened on RPT involved test metric interpretations and the IBM/RPT support team was very helpful to diagnose the non-RPT related issues mentioned.

To provide and overall usage picture, all tests created in RPT are exported to and performed by ITCAM-RT.The metrics stored in an Oracle database and displayed in views on IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM).We also use Crystal Reports to produce the reports presented to the customer.

The way how tests are presented in the tool, and the possibilities to edit tests and follow depending data using Data Correlation feature.

The Load Schedule has very nice preview, and the new Load Generator as the agent makes planing of testing environment capacity much simpler.

With each new version, the tool gets better and better features.

The handling of data correlations in the tool has helped us, and sped up our preparation of complex tests with a lot of security features, certificates, generally in enterprise environment. The tool supports Z/OS applications which is very important to our customers, as well.

I've been using it for over 10 years.

Sometimes new versions have bugs.

With each version, it becomes more and more stable.

IBM has very good support in this area, and an accessible knowledge base, so over 90% of issues can be resolved using the web. If you need it, IBM support for the tool is very fast and useful.

It depends on the scope, complexity and expected load. After introducing Load Generator Agent, as I already mentioned, setting up environment and capacity planning became simpler.

We implemented in-house and for our customers, in our lab for performance testing on demand, and we offer consulting services for the tool throughout the world.

IBM separately licenses tool and concurrent users (threads), but for this tool, IBM offers the renting of licenses over SaaS programs. Customers can rent licenses for a fixed time (minimum is one month) and use licenses during a projects duration. Licenses over SaaS are much cheaper and the customer gets IBM support.

We evaluate HP Load Runner and use JMeter. Generating of complex performance test with lot of data correlation was much faster and simpler using Rational Performance Tester. In the case of generating robotic performance testing, we still sometimes use JMeter. For LoadRunner, I would say it is a much more strategic decision when to use the tool.

The Resource Monitoring feature has more flexible options for different OS's such as Windows, Unix and Linux.

It provides the option to collect real-time data using ITM monitoring agents.

Reporting needs improvement to provide more customization options in the performance test analyst to build custom reports. Recent versions like 8.6, and 8.7 has better scalability on user load testing.

When compared to competitors, the reporting module in this version was missing user friendly customization on building report variants such asTransaction Percentile Summary etc. Also, I think time cannot be excluded in the report, and no options to create customized report templates exist for reusability. These are two improvement areas which I can think of and I am not sure if they are rectified in the recent release, since I haven’t got much opportunity to use the latest version recently.

I've used it for over one year.

8/10

8/10

The initial setup was not difficult and proper instruction guides are provided with sufficient step by step instructions.

It's one of the most cost-effective products on the market.

• Less coding needed
• Easy to understand
• Easy integrating it with existing systems
• I can test more than one performance test type (load testing, stress testing, scalability testing, etc)

Overall, all the features have been improved, especially if you need powerful performance testing tools. But, it would be better if this tool supported database connections directly, instead of importing from .csv file

I've used it for seven months.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8/10.

8/10.

Previously, I used JMeter, because if we are talking about the open version JMeter is nearly perfect in usability and reliability side. But, since the organization changed, I needed the more powerful tools.

It was straightforward.

As a consultant, my client implement this tools.

Now, the price slightly expensive especially if you are in small-medium company, but if you are in a medium-high company, and need the powerful tools with IBM great name, just use it. It would be better if IBM release the 'cheapest' version for the small-medium company.

• Test Creation
• Execution

Helped in improving response times in a few of our transactions.

They need to have support for more protocols & frameworks, as well as making it more user friendly.

We've been using it for six months.

It's fair.

It's fair.

It was complex.

It was implemented in-house.

We chose this product because it was a better price than Loadrunner.

Real time view and its inbuilt root cause analysis tools is something which I like the most. This feature is something unique to RPT when compared to other market leading tools like load runner.

Like any other performance testing tool, this helped us to identify performance bottlenecks in the application prior to the go live. It also helped us to identify and pinpoint the issues in the applications code by using its inbuilt root cause analysis tools.

User friendliness can be better, as this is one area where it lacks. More over the connectivity options with other IBM in-house products like Rational Clear Quest, IBM Tivoli and Rational Team Concert can be improved.

We've used it for two years.

Yes, the tool seems to be unstable/unresponsive sometimes. The resource utilization by the tool itself is on the higher side when compared to other tools in the market.

Customer support is above average to excellent.

I have used a variety of the tools that are available.

It was straightforward.

It was done in-house, and I would advise you to have more JVM memory allocated for this product than the default amount.

The pricing is similar to Load Runner but the package for virtual user licencing is different. I would recommend this tool for small businesses with only web applications for performance testing.

This tool was the only option with the customer withwhom I worked with.