HP Application Lifecycle Management 11.50 Readme
Software version: 11.50
Publication date: June 2012
This file provides information about HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) 11.50:
For detailed information about ALM, refer to the documentation set. To access the ALM Documentation Library from the main ALM window, choose Help > Documentation Library.
Note: Documentation for ALM extensions is available from: https://hpln.hp.com/group/application-lifecycle-management.
Documentation
The first page of this document contains the following identifying information:
To check for recent updates or to verify that you are using the most recent edition, visit this URL: HP Software Product Manuals
To retrieve a document, select the:
You must have Adobe Reader installed to view files in PDF format (*.pdf). To download Adobe Reader, go to the Adobe web site.
What's New
For a list of new features in ALM 11.50, refer to the HP Application Lifecycle Management What's New, available from ALM by clicking the Help button and choosing What's New.
Installation Instructions and System Requirements
For installation instructions, refer to HP Application Lifecycle Management Installation Guide and HP ALM Performance Center Installation Guide. The guides are located on the installation DVDs.
This section describes the system configurations required for installing HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) on a server machine, and ALM on client machines. This section also includes system requirements for the Performance Center Server and components.
Important: The supported environment information is accurate for the ALM 11.50 release, but there may be updates for ALM 11.50 patches. For the most up-to-date supported environments, refer to the HP Software Web site using the following URL: http://www.hp.com/go/TDQC_SysReq
This section includes:
ALM Server System Requirements
This section includes recommended and supported software configurations for ALM.
Starting with ALM 11.50, the application server is part of the core ALM functionality. ALM is no longer hosted by a third party application server.
When setting up the ALM server machine, consider the following:
- 64 Bit support:
- For UNIX, only Solaris 10 Sparc 64 bit is supported in ALM 11.50.
- It is recommended to increase permsize and heapsize. For more information, refer to Performance Tuning Best Practices for ALM at HP Software Product Manuals.
- IPv6 support: ALM 11.50 can work on IPv6 enabled systems. However, ALM is still developed within an IPv4 environment. This means that in ALM 11.50:
- Data communication is possible using and IPv4 transport.
- Management communication can be over IPv4 transport.
- The presence of the IPv4 network stack is required.
Note: If you use HP ALM Performance Center, see HP ALM Performance Center System Requirements.
ALM Server Hardware Requirements
The following table includes hardware requirements for installing ALM on a server machine.
Recommended ALM Server Configurations
The following table includes recommended configurations for each operating system.
64 bit
Supported ALM Server Configurations
The following applications are supported for installing ALM on a server machine. You may use any combination of these applications. To ensure best performance and quick support resolutions, we recommend using the recommended environments, described in the above section Recommended ALM Server Configurations.
ALM Client System Requirements
This section describes the client system requirements for installing ALM on client machines.
- If you are integrating ALM with other HP testing tools, you must modify the DCOM permissions on your client machine. For more information, see HP Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM187086.
- DCOM is not required for running Functional test sets (server-side execution). Functional test sets are available only in ALM Edition.
- Note: The ALM 11.50 client is certified on 64 bit Windows. However, the ALM 11.50 client is still a 32 bit application that is based on ActiveX 32 bit and runs under WOW64 (the Windows 32 bit On Windows 64 bit emulator). To enable the ALM 11.50 client on 64 bit Windows, use a 32 bit instance of Internet Explorer. By default, 32 bit Internet Explorer is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer. To verify that the client process is running in the emulation mode, open the Windows Task Manager Processes tab. All 32 bit processes should be marked with *32.
- For more details regarding this limitation, see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282423. For more details regarding WOW64, see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249(v=VS.85).aspx.
- Since the Quality Center client runs as a 32 bit process, you should use 32 bit versions of Visual C++ 2005 SP1 ATL Security Update Redistributable and Microsoft Office.
HP ALM Performance Center System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for installing ALM for Performance Center, and Performance Center components.
Performance Center Server Configurations
This section describes the system requirements for installing a Performance Center Server.
Recommended ALM and Performance Center Configurations
The following table describes the recommended configuration for Performance Center server components. They should be used along with the recommended ALM server configurations above. For more information, see Recommended ALM Server Configurations.
Host and Windows Standalone Load Generator Configurations
This section describes the system requirements for installing a Performance Center Host and a standalone Load Generator on Windows.
Linux Standalone Load Generator Configurations
This section describes the supported operating systems and CPU types for installing a standalone Load Generator on Linux systems.
Standalone VuGen and Standalone Analysis Configurations
This section describes the system requirements for installing Standalone VuGen and Standalone Analysis.
System Requirements for the MI Listener
This following table describes the system requirements for the MI Listener.
VMware ESX Configurations
ALM can be deployed on a VMware ESX server. The system configurations of each virtual machine are the same as the ALM server system configurations.
Note: ALM has been tested only on the latest versions of the virtualization products. Other virtual environments are supported as long as the virtualization vendor claims full compatibility between the virtual and physical environment.
Notes and Limitations
ALM Installation
- Trial Version: If you run the HP ALM Server Configuration Wizard more than once in order to renew a 30-day ALM trial version, you violate the evaluation license policy, and are in breach of compliance. You run the risk of being assessed the full license cost.
- UAC:
- It is not possible to install ALM Platform Loader for a non-admin user on Windows 7 64 bit when User Account Control is enabled.
- If UAC is enabled during ALM installation, the ALM Configuration Wizard may not launch, and the ALM server may not start automatically.
Workaround: Disable UAC on the ALM machine.
- When a project is restored or imported onto a server which has a confidential data passphrase that differs from the one on the server on which the project was originally created, an error occurs. The message, Failed to Get Simple Key Entity, appears when the data encrypted on the database layer is accessed. To avoid, this issue, make sure to install the server with the same confidential data passphrase as the original server.
- Windows Systems: The system tray ALM icon is not available on remote desktop sessions.
- Unix Systems: ALM does not calculate free disk space on linked subfolders.
- If a PDF viewer is not installed on the server machine, the Help button in the HP ALM Server Configuration Wizard does not respond.
Workaround: Install Acrobat Adobe or compatible software, and verify that the software is configured to automatically open PDF files. You can also open the HP Application Lifecycle Management Installation Guide directly from: <ALM installation folder>\application\20qcbin.war\Help\doc_library\pdfs\Install.pdf.- When setting the database server configuration options, ALM does not support an empty Site Administration database schema password.
- Microsoft SQL database: When you upgrade the existing Site Administration schema or upgrade a copy of the existing schema on an SQL server with SQL Server Authentication, the td user must exist in the database and be the owner of all user tables.
Workaround: Use the following SQL command to update the table owner in the database: sp_changeobjectowner '<table_name>', 'td'.- Shortcuts: After you install ALM, shortcuts are not created on the desktop.
Workaround: Use the shortcuts in the HP ALM Platform Start menu, or create a shortcut on the desktop from the <ALM installation directory>\bin folder.- Oracle: When using Oracle 11.2.0.3, there is an error when updating a table with Text index if the owning schema name is more than 29 characters long.
Workaround: Apply Oracle patch 13885389 for Windows or 13683125 for Linux/Solaris.ALM Client Installation
- Client Certification: When trying to load the ALM client, you may receive an error indicating that initialization has failed. This can occur if the client machine is missing the new root certificate. For information about Verisign code signing, see this Verisign article: https://knowledge.verisign.com/support/ssl-certificates-support/index?page=content&id=AR1747&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US.
Workaround: Install the 2048-bit code signing root and intermediate certificates. For information, see this Verisign article: https://knowledge.verisign.com/support/ssl-certificates-support/index?page=content&actp=CROSSLINK&id=SO19140.- FDCC: HP ALM 11.50 has been tested against FDCC regulations.
- The following limitation applies to administrator users on Windows 7. If UAC is disabled, and the ALM Loader MSI is installed, the user is not able to log into ALM.
Workaround: Uninstall the ALM Platform Loader and reinstall using the yellow information bar, or enable UAC.- Antivirus software installed on a client machine may interfere with the deployment of client ALM files. Deployment may fail with miscellaneous errors.
Workaround: Update the antivirus software and virus definition files. If this does not solve the problem, disable the antivirus software, and then install ALM.- Connecting to ALM with the server name and connecting to the server with the server IP address from the same workstation results in ALM files deploying twice on the workstation.
- Windows XP (SP3) with Internet Explorer 8: When connecting to ALM, Internet Explorer may crash. This is as a result of Microsoft Java Virtual Machine being installed on the client machine. The component does not integrate properly with Internet Explorer 8, and Microsoft recommends removing it. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/interoperability/java/faq.aspx
Workaround: Remove msjava from the client machine. Alternatively, delete or rename the file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\msjava.dll
To remove msjava, use the Microsoft JVM Removal Tool described at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826878- If a non-administrator user with privileges to install ActiveX controls clicks the yellow information bar to install ALM, client installation fails.
Workaround: Non-administrator users should be prevented from installing ActiveX controls, and should only use the link on the launch page to download the ALM Platform Loader.- The following prerequisite applies if there is a forward proxy with Basic Authentication between the server and client machines. Before the first connection to the ALM server, each ALM client must configure the proxy credentials by using the Webgate Customization Tool. To run the tool, on the ALM client machine, browse to the following path and click the appropriate link:
http://<ALM server name>[<:port number>]/qcbin/Apps/
In WebGate Customization, do the following:
Project Upgrade
- Project Repository Migration:
- While repository migration is in progress, you cannot export the project, or create a new project by copying data from the existing project.
- While repository migration is in progress, if you deactivate a project on an ALM 11.50 server, and restore the project on another ALM 11.50 server, the project is not synchronized between both servers and may be corrupted.
Workaround: Instead of deactivating the project, remove the project from the first ALM 11.50 server.
Note: There is no limitation between an ALM 11.50 server and a previous Quality Center server.- The following limitation may occur when editing a file in the repository (for example, an attachment, script, or report) while the repository migration is in progress. The edited file may remain in the old repository without a record in the repository migration report.
Workaround: After the repository migration has completed, remove the file manually from the repository.- Repository migration may take a long time due to numerous debug messages.
Workaround: Set the log level to "Warning".- While repository migration is in progress, you must not perform a backup of the database or file system.
Workaround: If it is essential to back up the database or file system before repository migration is complete, first suspend the repository migration, and deactivate the project. For more information, refer to the HP Application Lifecycle Management Administrator Guide.- To upgrade a project that has extensions enabled, the same extensions must be available in the new version. Before upgrading the project, the availability of these extensions in the new version should be verified. Contact your system administrator for more information.
- Upgrade fails if the History flag has been checked for a virtual field in Customization.
Workaround: Before upgrade, make sure that the History flag has been unchecked for all virtual fields in Customization. .- Stored Procedures: ALM upgrade fails when trying to upgrade projects which contain stored procedures created by a user who doesn't have the required permissions for the upgrade project process.
Workaround: Save and remove the stored procedures before the upgrade and put them back in after the upgrade succeeds. Alternatively, change the DB user of the stored procedures to a user that has the required permissions for upgrade.- ALM fails to upgrade projects where the ALM repository uses a mapped drive (non-UNC path) as the base repository path.
Workaround: In the Site Configuration tab of Site Administration, modify the base repository path from an absolute path to a UNC path.- Database schema:
- When the project schema on Oracle contains user defined tables or views which have field names which are the same as the ALM project's predefined field names, it leads to inconsistent behavior.
Workaround: Rename the field names of the user defined tables and views so that they are unique.- ALM fails to upgrade projects if the size of the field LN_LINK_TYPE is changed.
- Fields of type Date are converted in ALM 11.50 to type DateTime. If any of these fields contain the value 0, the 11.50 ALM client may crash.
Workaround: Search for all rows that contain DateTime fields with the value 0, and replace with the current date/time.- When deleting extra user columns from a database schema, verify that they are not defined in the SYSTEM_FIELD table.
- Project verification checks whether a project used version control based on the Site Administration PROJECTS table alone, and does not verify that the VER_CTRL table is empty.
- When you upgrade a project, ALM creates a new requirement type for each distinct value of the Type field and assigns them to the requirements in the original project. If there are many such values, a large number of requirement types are created in the upgraded project.
Workaround: Before upgrading a project, clear the Type field of values that you do not want to be converted to requirement types.- Microsoft SQL database:
- Oracle: When you upgrade ALM projects on an Oracle database, the size of the Oracle rollback segment (RBS) may increase when running large transactions. When you upgrade large projects (with a database size greater than 2 GB), it is recommended that you increase the RBS size for the duration of the upgrade so that it has at least 3 GB free. After the upgrade, you can change the RBS size to its size before the upgrade.
- To benefit from ALM's session reconnect feature, use of the Major Change option for saving customization changes should be minimized. After a project is upgraded to ALM 11.50, the project administrator should review the Allow Major Change permission for custom user groups, and adjust accordingly to minimize the number of users who are granted this permission.
Documentation
- Extension Documentation: Documentation for ALM extensions is available from: https://hpln.hp.com/group/application-lifecycle-management.
- When viewing the online Help in Internet Explorer 8, numbered or alphabetical lists may appear corrupted.
- The HP Application Lifecycle Management Tutorial and HP ALM Performance Center Quick Start will be available with a future patch.
- You can view video demonstrations of main HP Application Lifecycle Management features by choosing Help > Product Feature Movies in the ALM main window.
- For details on new and discontinued documentation in the HP ALM Documentation Library, refer to the HP Application Lifecycle Management What's New.
Site Administration
- Templates: When creating a template by copying an existing template or project, or when importing an existing template, the option to enable versioning is mistakenly displayed. ALM creates the template with versioning enabled or disabled based on the source template or project.
- Project Import: When importing a project file into ALM, you cannot import a file larger than 2GB.
- Project Restore: When restoring a project, if the dbid.xml contains a wrong or non-existent schema name, the restore operation fails. After the failure, the project is created and cannot be removed.
- Project Verify: When copying a valid project that has the ALM Lab Extension enabled, if you run verify on it, the verify may fail because of missing indexes. This problem can be resolved by running repair on the project.
- When creating a project, you cannot use characters °, µ, or § in the project name or domain name.
- When a project is copied, non-default values in the DATACONST table are not copied. For example, the REPLACE_TITLE parameter.
Workaround: Manually insert the values into the DATACONST table of the target project after the project has been copied.- Copying a project may lead to an execution timeout error if the project is too large.
- When applying the REPLACE_TITLE parameter to the Management, Test Resources, and Dashboard modules, only the module name in the ALM sidebar is replaced.
- When restoring a project, you should select the dbid.xml file located in the project repository. This ensures that the project retains its original ID. If a project does not have its original ID, the following cross project features may not function properly: cross project customization, importing and synchronizing libraries, and cross project graphs.
Project Customization
- User-defined fields: When trying to add a custom user defined field in a project that was created originally in Quality Center 9.2 or earlier, a memory protected or corrupted error may occur.
Workaround: Run the following query on the project's schema:
For SQL Server:
UPDATE td.SYSTEM_FIELD
SET SF_ROOT_ID=NULL
WHERE SF_ROOT_ID = 0 AND
SF_COLUMN_NAME <> 'CF_FATHER_ID' AND
SF_COLUMN_NAME <> 'CY_FOLDER_ID'
For Oracle:
UPDATE <SCHEMA_NAME>.SYSTEM_FIELD
SET SF_ROOT_ID=NULL
WHERE SF_ROOT_ID = 0 AND
SF_COLUMN_NAME <> 'CF_FATHER_ID' AND
SF_COLUMN_NAME <> 'CY_FOLDER_ID'- Data-hiding filter. After deleting user-defined fields from a project, the fields are not cleared from the data-hiding filter.
- Permissions: The following limitation applies in upgraded projects, where user groups are assigned a Create permission without an Update permission. When trying to create a new entity, all the entity fields are read-only. As a result, the user is unable to create the entity.
Workaround: For any entity where a Create permission is assigned, assign the Update permission as well.- Windows XP: When opening Project Customization, the 'Service of type Mercury...' error may occur.
Workaround: Close the error box and retry.- Project Planning and Tracking: In the General tab, the following limitations apply when creating, updating, or deleting KPI types:
- When working with an upgraded project, only users that belong to already-existing groups created in a previous version, can create, update, or delete KPI types. This is in addition to users that belong to TDAdmin and Project Manager groups.
- Users that belong to a user-defined group created in ALM 11.50 based on groups created in a previous version, can create, update, or delete KPI types. This is in addition to users that belong to TDAdmin and Project Manager groups.
Users that do not belong to the groups mentioned above are unable to create, update, or delete KPI types.
Cross Project Customization
General
- Default Values: Default values are saved and used according to module and not according to entity. If you open a defect via the Test Plan module, the default values from the Test Plan module are used instead of the default values from the Defect module. Since default values do not exist at all in the Requirements module, a defect opened from the Requirements module does not have default values at all.
- Logging in to ALM with the same username on machines with different locales may result in an error upon login, or when navigating between modules or to Project Customization.
- To attain optimal system performance with ALM features, refer to the HP Application Lifecycle Management v11.50 Benchmark document, available in a future ALM patch.
- Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP: When using the Save As dialog box, if a file is selected, the entered filename is ignored. The file is saved as the selected file name.
- Unable to upload files to ALM when Microsoft Internet Explorer proxy authentication is enabled.
- After copying and pasting entities across projects, related entities that were copied are not visible until the view is refreshed.
- If you are working with the Text Search feature or Advanced Filters, and there is a high load on the system, you may experience an impact on performance. In this case, further iterative tuning and optimization of your environment and specifically your database server is required. If necessary, patches will be provided in the future to address these issues.
- The following limitation occurs when you create execution conditions in the Execution Flow such that two manual tests run only after another test has finished running. If you run the test set in the Automatic Runner, only one of the two manual tests runs. The status of the other test is listed as Running but the test does not run.
- When you open a new session in ALM, you may be prompted to install the ALM client even though it was installed the first time you ran ALM.
Workaround: In Internet Explorer, open the Manage Add-ons dialog box (Tools > Manage Add-ons). In the Show box, select Downloaded Controls. Delete the controls Loader Class and ALM Platform Loader. In Internet Explorer 8, right-click the controls, select More Information, and click Remove.- If you use the data-hiding filter to hide data in a particular folder from a particular user group, and subsequently delete the folder, a user that belongs to the group is unable to log into ALM.
Workaround: A project administrator should modify the data-hiding filter in Project Customization.- Windows XP SP3: While running a system test remotely on a Windows XP SP3 client machine, an error message is displayed. For more information, see HP Software Self-solve knowledge base article KM187086.
- Unicode support: The following ALM features are not included in Unicode support:
- Workflow script editor: Available in Project Customization.
- Automatic Runner: Available from the Test Lab module
- System Information: Available from Attachment views, when clicking the System Info button
- Screen capture / Snapshot: Available from Attachment views, when clicking the Snapshot button
- Requirement to Test Wizard: Available from the Requirements module, when executing the 'Convert to Test command
- Generate Test: Available from the Requirements module, when executing the Generate Test command
- VAPI-XP script editor: A control embedded in the Script view in the Test Lab module
- Document Generator: Available from the main ALM menu
- Excel reports: Available from the Dashboard module, when viewing an excel report
- Site Administration
- Files that are larger than 4 gigabytes cannot be uploaded to ALM. For example, attachments, test results, or test resources.
- Shortcut keys. To focus on the module menu options, use ALT or F10.
Version Control
- Service Test Management: The Service Test Management extension does not support version control.
- In a version controlled project, you cannot update the Fields values of a copied entity using the MoveTo event.
- When enabling version control on an existing project, the first check-in time is set when the first version control action occurs (check-out, check-in, view history of versions, etc.).
- Version control is not supported when working with the following test types: Vuser Script and LoadRunner scenario.
- In a version control enabled project, you cannot copy and paste entities that you have checked out. You also cannot copy and paste entities with related entities that you have checked out.
Workaround: Check in the entities or undo the check-out before you copy and paste them.Releases Module
Releases Module - Project Planning and Tracking
- For projects that have been upgraded to 11.50, the Test Instances Executed out-of-the-box KPI type contains a KPI analysis graph named Not Executed Test Instances by Responsible Tester. The name of the KPI analysis graph should be changed to Not Run Test Instances By Responsible Tester. This has been corrected for ALM 11.50, but needs to be manually implemented for upgraded projects.
- In the Scorecard tab, the scorecard can contain no more than 600 cells. User must take into account the number of scope items and KPIs defined for each milestone.
Libraries Module
- After importing a library, the roots of the imported library are not marked in the content view when the original filter contained entity IDs.
- Sharing of libraries is not supported between version control enabled projects and non-version control enabled projects.
- When creating a baseline, if an attachment or script is missing from the file system, a warning is written to the ALM log file. The baseline is created nonetheless.
- After synchronizing a source library with an imported library's baseline, you cannot view, in the Imported By tab, from which baseline the imported library was originally imported. In addition, after synchronizing an imported library with a source library's baseline, in the Imported From tab, you cannot view with which baseline the imported library was synchronized.
- In the Comparison Settings dialog box, selecting the Coverage check box in either the Requirements or Tests tab instructs ALM to consider coverage. To ignore coverage, the Coverage check box in both the Requirements and Tests tabs must be cleared. Therefore, if you select or clear the Coverage check box in a library that contains only requirements, for example, this setting is saved and also applied when comparing a library that contains only tests.
- In a version control enabled project, if you synchronize libraries when there are entities checked out by another user, the checked out entities are not synchronized. When you compare the libraries after synchronization, the entities that were not synchronized because they were checked out by another user are not displayed as Modified in the Compare Libraries Tool dialog box, despite the fact that they are different.
Requirements Module
Risk-Based Quality Management
- RBQM fields: The labels of the following requirement fields refer to "Business Impact" instead of "Business Criticality": RBQM Business Impact, RBQM Custom Business Impact, RBQM Effective Business Impact, RBQM Use Custom Business Impact.
Workaround: You can modify the labels of these fields manually in Project Customization.- Version Control: Checked out requirements are not reflected in the risk analysis graph. However, when you drill down the graph, it does show the checked out requirements correctly.
- Version Control: This limitation occurs when checking out a requirement that is not an assessment requirement, and then it is changed to an assessment requirement. The requirement will not be included in the RBQM analysis until it is checked in again.
Business Models Module
- If you remove a model from the business models tree without deleting the representative requirements. If you then reimport the same model, new representative requirements are created with the suffix _1.
- Colors and fonts of model activities are not imported into ALM. Activities are displayed in default colors and fonts.
- If a model path includes a loop, the loop is ignored, and activities are listed only once in the path. Paths that begin or end with a loop are not considered.
- If reimported models change drastically, paths may not resolve automatically.
Workaround: An icon indicates unresolved paths. Resolve the paths manually.Test Plan Module
Test Resources Module
Test Lab Module
- Test Runs: In the current version of ALM 11.50, the Test Runs tab is inside the Test Lab module. It will be moved to a separate Test Runs module in a future patch.
- Test Execution: When non-latin characters are used for the Domain Name and Project Name fields, the notification email for test set execution summary may contain corrupted characters in those fields.
- Pinned test sets: The following test types cannot be added to pinned test sets: Vuser Script, and LoadRunner scenario. Vuser scripts: Baselines that you create with Vuser scripts include only the script action, and not additional data included in the data subfolder, such as snapshots, and results.
Server Side Execution/Lab Management
- Web Servers: When working with the Lab Management extension, you must connect directly to the ALM application server. Lab Management does not work with web server configurations.
- Functional test sets:
- If you configure a Functional test set to stop on failure of a test, the test set does not stop running.
- If you try to execute a Functional test set that contains a test with a manual component, an error occurs. See the event log for the full error.
- If you try to execute a Functional test set that contains a test which is in a Blocked state, the test set will remain in the Running state, but the rest of the test instances will not run.
Workaround: Do not run test sets that contain tests with a state of Blocked.- Functional tests with custom test statuses are not supported. The test set is aborted.
- Build verification suites: For build verification suites, the ability to use VUDs is disabled.
- Execution Report:
- If your project includes non-latin characters, the Execution Report does not open.
Workaround: Rename the project.- The Execution report does not support 125% scale or a non-medium font size.
Workaround: Using the View > Zoom menu in Internet Explorer, reset the zoom to 100%. Using the View > Text Size menu, change the font size to medium.Text Search
- When you use the Text Search feature to search for a string that is also part of an HTML tag, such as body or html, all records containing formatted text that uses the tag are found, as well as records containing the search string as text within a searchable field.
- Oracle: When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that Oracle has a default stoplist for each supported language containing a list of stopwords. The search does not find words that are in the stoplist for the language in which the search is being performed. For more information, refer to the Oracle Text Supply Stoplist (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/text.102/b14218/astopsup.htm#CEGBGCDF).
- Oracle: When you use the Text Search feature in ALM on an Oracle database, note that there are some special characters that function as search operators within Oracle. If you use some of them in the search expression, the search may not find the expected results. For example, if you search for the expressions 'a* a' or 'a%a', which contain the operators * or %, an error message may display.
Defects Module
- Entering more than 127 special characters into a defect Summary field causes an error. An empty defect is created.
- When the permissions to modify the Defect Status field are restricted to "Owner Only", even the owner receives the message "Can be modified by owner only" when modifying the Defect Status.
- In the Defects module, the print defect option is not available.
Dashboard Module
- Project Reports: In attachments, hyperlinks to files with I18N letters in the filename appear distorted. Clicking on the hyperlink leads to an error.
- Graphs: When you generate a Progress Graph in the Dashboard module, the graph may display different information from that displayed in previous versions of ALM. This can occur when the field that you group by does not have the History option enabled in Project Customization, or the History option was not enabled at some time during the period shown in the graph.
- Requirements: When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the filter for Requirement Coverage, these fields are ignored when filtering the coverage.
- Requirements: When creating a Requirement Coverage report section as a child of a Tests report section, if you include Test fields in the report template, these fields are empty in the generated report.
- Excel reports: Users who belong to groups that have data-hiding filters, are able to access the restricted data through Excel reports.
Workaround: In Site Administration, add values to the SQL_QUERY_VALIDATION_BLACK_LIST configuration parameter, such as operators, and table names.- Excel reports: In the Entities pane of the Query Builder, the VC_TEST version control table is not listed.
Workaround: Type the table name manually in the SQL query.Document Generator
- Due to a limit of nine header levels in Microsoft Word, only the first nine hierarchical levels are listed in the document Table of Contents.
- If you select a Test Lab module graph to include in a project document from the Test Sets, Tests, or Runs pages, the graph is not included in the document.
Workaround: To include a Test Lab module graph in a project document, select the graph from the Test Lab page in the Document Generator.Integrations
- QuickTest Professional:
- QuickTest Professional cannot connect to ALM over NTLM (NT Lan Manager) if the Windows user is not a domain member.
- To integrate QuickTest Professional 10.00 with ALM 11.50, you must install the HP Quality Center Client Side Connectivity Add-in.
- After re-saving a QuickTest test, the broken relations are deleted and the user can no longer view them in the ALM Dependencies tab. If a QuickTest test has a dependency that is broken (for example, because the dependent asset was deleted), it is displayed, as expected, as a broken relation in ALM. If you later add another dependency to the QuickTest test, ALM displays the new dependency. The Dependencies tab no longer displays the broken dependency as a dependency at all, even though the action is still referencing an asset that does not exist, and the test fails when it runs. In QuickTest, the missing asset still shows up as a missing asset, as expected.
- On Windows 7 workstations, if DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled, test scripts are not displayed.
Workaround: Disable DEP.- For a keyword-driven component, Microsoft Windows 7 users cannot open the Automation sub-tab in ALM. When a user clicks the Automation sub-tab, an error message displays.
Workaround: The problem is caused by the VISTA Data Execution Prevention (DEP) flag. Setting this flag to AlwaysOff solves the problem. Run a command prompt as administrator and run the following: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff'- Opening components in upgraded projects after repository migration may take a long time.
- If the environment variable file associated with your test or component is stored in ALM and you modify it from the ALM Attachments tab, the changes are not applied until you reopen the test.
- If you connect to ALM from QuickTest Professional using an SSL connection, and you click "No" in the Security Alert dialog box, the HP ALM Connection dialog box stops responding.
- When launching a QuickTest Professional script from ALM using an SSL connection, the Security Alert dialog box opens. QuickTest Professional might stop responding when you click "Yes" in the Security Alert dialog box.
- When launching a QuickTest Professional script from ALM, the user running the script must have read/write permissions for the system cache folder.
- Microsoft Windows 7 users cannot open the Keyword View format of the Automation sub-tab in ALM. When a user clicks the Automation sub-tab, an error message displays.
- Service Test: When a Service Test test is executed from ALM, the default values of the test parameters are not used, which causes the execution to fail.
- Unicode: The integration of ALM with other products is not Unicode compliant. Therefore:
- When working with tests or components stored in ALM, you should not use Unicode values (such as the name of the test or component, the name of an application area, the default value of a test, action, component parameter, or method argument values).
- Data sent to QuickTest from ALM (such as values for test, action, or component parameters) is not Unicode compliant.
- A user who has permission to add a defect, but not to modify it, is able to change the defect using the Find Similar Defects option in the Add Defect dialog box invoked from the testing tool's Test Results window.
- It is possible to fill list fields with invalid data in the Add Defect dialog box invoked from the testing tool's Test Results window.
Open Test Architecture/API and Workflow
- REST: With ALM 11.50, the REST API now provides resources to carry out most day-to-day tasks with ALM data. At this stage, the REST API is still a technology preview. We anticipate withdrawing this status in an upcoming 11.5x service pack, and announcing that the API is production-quality code.
- You cannot change the attributes of a user-defined action via the workflow. For example,
Actions.Action("UserDefinedActions.action_name").Enabled = false
does not disable the action. In addition, if you use a user-defined action in a workflow script without the "UserDefinedActions." prefix, an error is displayed.- If you change the workflow script of a created entity, the change does not occur in copied entities. (11.50 - defect 193826)
- When you use an Open Test Architecture (OTA) list, note that list numbering begins at 1. For example, mylist.Item(1) refers to the first item in the list myList. If you have used OTA lists with numbering beginning at 0 in previous versions of ALM, you must manually update them to begin at 1.
- Favorites: You cannot retrieve favorite filters from the OTA connection's common or private settings, or from the COMMON_SETTINGS table. Use the new API for the Favorite entity.
- Creating Users: If LDAP is enabled, you cannot add users with API.
- Defects: When setting defect comments to read-only, the Add Comment button is not disabled.
- Defects: When changing view setting to show\hide the grid filters, the act_HideColumnFiltering action is triggered instead of _dxact_GridFilters1_WebDefectFrm.
- Attachments: When deleting an attachment in the New Defect dialog box, an incorrect action is triggered.
- No workflow action is available for closing the requirements tree or Req Coverage tab.
- The NewValue parameter in the FieldCanChange workflow event does not return a value when changes occur to the Target Cycle or Target Release field values.
Workaround: Run the following script:Function <entity>_FieldCanChange(FieldName,NewValue)
For i = 1 To NewValue.Count
MsgBox NewValue.Item(i).Name
Next
End Function
where New Value is a list of ISysTreeNode objects.
- Existing Open Test Architecture applications that change data fail in a project with Version Control enabled. You must change your code to check out items before you change them in code, and check them in after posting.
- Workflow scripts and Open Test Architecture applications run with the privileges of the logged-in user, not the privileges of the user who created the script. Scripts and applications that use protected objects, like the Command object, may fail, depending on the project security settings and the group to which the user belongs.
Workflow Backward Compatibility
The issues described below relate to workflow events, actions, and objects that have been changed. When necessary, instructions for modifying existing scripts for purposes of backward compatibility are provided.
- The naming convention for actions has been changed to context.action. For purposes of backward compatibility, the naming convention used in previous ALM versions for upgraded projects is still supported.
- In Project Customization, the following workflow events are not listed in the Scripts Tree in the Workflow Script Editor. These workflow events are supported for purposes of backward compatibility and are only available in upgraded projects.
GetNewReqPageName
GetReqDetailsPageName
GetNewBugPageName
MoveToFolder
MoveToSubject
MoveToComponentFolder (renamed to ComponentFolder_MoveTo)
The GetDetailsPageName is now supported for all entities, not just defect entities and replaces GetNewReqPageName, GetReqDetailsPageName, and GetNewBugPageName.- The CanDelete event has been added to tests, test folders, test sets, test set folders, business components, and business component folders. The Quality Center 10.00 syntax is still supported for purposes of backward compatibility in upgraded projects.
- The DeleteInTreeAct action is no longer supported for the ActionCanExecute event.
Workaround: Modify scripts to use the new action name instead.- The page (tab) number for the GetDetailsPageName, GetNewBugPageName, GetReqDetailsPageName, and GetNewBugPageName events now represents the absolute page number, regardless of the page's relative position in relation to the other displayed pages in the New Defect dialog box.
Workaround: Modify scripts to use the absolute page number instead of the relative page number.- When using the Fields objects in workflow scripts, ALM throws an exception if the script attempts to access a non-active or non-existing field. In Quality Center 10.00, a dummy field object was created.
Workaround: Modify scripts so they do not access non-active or non-existing fields. You can also add On Error Resume Next to scripts as a precaution.- In workflow scripts, the Lists object can be used only with fields that are defined as the Lookup List type in Project Customization of project entities. In previous ALM/Quality Center versions, you could use the Lists object on fields defined as type Lookup List and String.
Workaround: In Project Customization, change the type to Lookup List. To be able to specify values that do not appear in the defined lookup list, clear the Verify Value check box.- In ALM 11.50, when creating a new requirement, the Req_New event is called immediately upon opening the New Requirement dialog box, at which point the requirement type for the requirement is the default. If changes are made to the requirement type, the Req_FieldChange event sets the requirement type when submitting the new requirement. This impacts workflow scripts in a Quality Center 10.00 project that are dependant on the requirement type (for example, a script that arranges the order of fields in a dialog box differently depending on the requirement type) because the relevant code is triggered only by the Req_New event.
Workaround: Execute the same code on the Req_FieldChange event in addition to the Req_New event (in case the changed field is the requirement type).- ActionCanExecute event actions for changing the view in the Requirements module now consistently reflect the name of the target view.
Workaround: Modify scripts as follows:
Change the action actCoverageView to Requirements.DETAILS
Change the action actDocumentView to Requirements.TREE
Change the action _dxact_btReqGridView_wreq to Requirements.GRID
Change the action actCoverageAnalysisView to Requirements.ANALYSIS- The following Test Lab ActionCanExecute event actions are no longer triggered and should be removed from scripts:
- Legacy action names are not called for Analysis menu commands in the Requirements and Test Plan modules.
- New HTML tags added in ALM 11.50 might not be supported by Workflow scripts or external tools which rely on the specific Memo fields' HTML structure.
Workaround: Update the Workflow script/external data tool to the new HTML structure.Business Process Testing
The issues described below relate to working with business components, flows, and business process tests in ALM. For information on issues related to working with business components in QuickTest, refer to the relevant product's readme file.
- Localization:
- Managing projects:
- Libraries and baselines:
- Server-side execution:
- Automatic execution:
- 64-bit .NET applications cannot be tested by running business process tests with QuickTest-automated components.
- In Test Lab, test results do not include information about a business component whose run condition was not met during test run.
- QuickTest business components do not support parameter values from a local data sheet. If a component refers to a parameter from a local data sheet, it fails during execution from ALM.
Workaround: In the script used by ALM to run the business process test (called a wrapper test), change the reference to the sheet of the local data table.
To view the contents of a Business Process Testing wrapper test, from the Test Lab module > Test Runs tab, double-click the attachment icon next to the business process test or flow run in the grid.
Example
Change the line:
param = DataTable.GetSheet("[sheet name]").GetRowCount
to
param = DataTable.GetSheet("1").GetRowCount
For more information on wrapper tests, see the task about running automated business process tests and flows in the HP Business Process Testing User Guide.- An exception displaying the message "From QuickTest Professional: Item does not exist" occurs when running a business process test that contains a component request with QuickTest scripted automation.
Workaround: Do not define automation for component requests. Instead, in the Business Components module, drag the component request to another folder in the component tree to convert the request into a component. Then add automation.- You cannot run a business process test or flow remotely on a Windows 2008 32 bit host if the Com+ Network access application server role is not installed on the host machine. The following message is displayed: The component or application containing the component has been disabled.
Workaround: Manually install the Com+ Network access application server role:
1. Open the Server Manager.
2. Install the Application Server role that includes the Com+ Network access application server role.- Microsoft Windows 7:
- In the Business Components module, the ALM client terminates when clicking the Automation tab for a business component with QuickTest keyword-driven automation.
Workaround: Set the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) flag to AlwaysOff. To do so, run the Command Prompt as an administrator and paste: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff.Additional Notes and Limitations - Performance Center
Installation
- When installing the Shunra WAN emulation PCS component on a Performance Center server machine, installation fails and a message appears indicating that there is no Performance Center Server on the machine. Shunra cannot find the registry keys.
Workaround: Add the following keys and values:
For a 32 bit machine:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mercury
Interactive\LoadRunner\CustComponent\User Site Server]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mercury
Interactive\LoadRunner\CustComponent\User Site Server\CurrentVersion]
"Major"="12"
"Minor"="00"
"ServicePack"="0"
"HotUpdate"="0"
For a 64 bit machine:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mercury Interactive\LoadRunner\CustComponent\User Site Server]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mercury
Interactive\LoadRunner\CustComponent\User Site Server\CurrentVersion]
"Major"="12"
"Minor"="00"
"ServicePack"="0"
"HotUpdate"="0"- If Oracle is installed on the machine intended for the Performance Center Server, the IIS port will be in use by HTTPOra service. To use the machine as a Performance Center Server, you must stop and disable the HTTPOra service, run IIS, and install the Performance Center Server.
- For standalone installations, you must manually install the prerequisite application, .NET Framework 4.
- When uninstalling the Performance Center Server or the Performance Center host, some of the DCOM objects, and other registry keys and files are not removed.
Migration
- When the migration tool is installed, files and folders are copied directly to a selected folder. As the application is isolated so there is no registry, no system files are copied or updated, and the application is not listed in Add/Remove Programs. To uninstall the tool, delete the folder where the migration tool was installed.
Performance Test Design
Performance Test Execution
- In a versioned project, you can run a performance test only if it has been checked in once first.
- When the test run uses a standalone load generator machine, in some cases you may need to add the Controller IP to the list of target IPs.
- You cannot run QuickTest tests on a host that is being used as both a Controller and a load generator.
- To see the Vusers Log in an environment where the system user is non-administrative, grant the non-administrative system user full control of the following directory on the Controller machine: %windir%\system32.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
- For version-enabled projects, if a user checks out a test, defines SLAs, and then runs the test while the test is still checked out, the SLA report is available only for that user. Another user can view the run but not the SLA report because he only has access to the checked-in version of the test which does not have SLA definitions.
WAN Emulation
- When the Performance Center system user is a non-administrative user, WAN Emulation monitors are not displayed in the Windows Resources graph during a performance test run. However, you can view the WAN Emulation counters locally on the load generator using the PerfMon utility. To view the WAN Emulation monitors in the online monitors while running a performance test, change the system user to an administrative system user.
- In version-enabled projects, if a test scheduled to autostart contains scripts that are checked out, the autostart fails.
- There is no backward compatibility between the current LoadRunner/WAN Emulation integration and any previous integrations.
- The integrated 3rd party software may not comply with accepted Internationalization (I18N) conventions.
- Selecting either Use bandwidth, or Use custom bandwidth in the Network: Speed Simulation node in the Run Time Settings, may interfere with the WAN Emulation settings and could lead to unexpected behavior.
- WAN Emulation is disabled if the host used as the Load Generator is also used as the Controller.
- WAN Emulation is not supported if the load generator is running on a UNIX platform.
Running Vuser Scripts
- Scripts whose names exceed 126 characters will fail to run.
- Performance Center does not support running Sybase Vusers on UNIX platforms.
- HTML-based Vusers using Auto Proxy configuration may influence Performance Center host memory usage during a large performance test run.
- You cannot view a snapshot on an error if a Vuser is running on a UNIX load generator.
- Performance Center does not support HTTP protocol with certificates on secure connection (SSL) over the firewall.
- When the Vuser script is a compiled Vuser, the Controller does not send the .dll to the remote machine. Workaround: Using VuGen, add the .dll to the list of script files and upload the script to your project.
- The following Vusers are not supported over the firewall: Corba-Java, RMI-Java, Jacada, and Java.
- Replaying a VB Vuser on a load generator machine with Windows 7 requires administrator privileges.
Monitor Profiles
- If you create a Load Test with a monitor profile, copy it to a different project, but choose not to copy linked entities, you cannot remove the monitor profile.
- Configure Monitors in the Topology Designer window is not supported for SiteScope 11.10 and11.11. Instead configure the SiteScope monitor from the monitor profile.
Online Monitoring
- The default host monitors may not work if the Controller and the load generators are on a non-English environment.
- A Load Generator Over Firewall machine can act either as a Load Generator or as the source machine for the Network Delay monitor at a given time, but not both of them concurrently.
- If the Total Processor Time does not appear on the Host Monitor graph, this is due to a Microsoft limitation related to time synchronization between the client and server machines.
- To change the default monitor settings of the Network Delay monitor, use ICMP instead of TCP.
- If you install a SAPGUI client that is logged in with a specific user, the SAPGUI may not work when logging in with a different user. Workaround: Install the SAPGUI client with the IUSR_METRO or equivalent Performance Center user (PC Identity).
HP Diagnostics Data
- If you configure Performance Center to postpone result collation to a later time, you need to configure an additional setting for Diagnostics data. Modify the server.properties file on the Diagnostics server <Diagnostics_HOME>\Server\etc directory and set distributor.offlinedelivery.preserveFiles = true.
The results are saved for up to five days. To extend this time, Modify the webserver.properties file on the Diagnostics server <Diagnostics_HOME>\Server\etc directory and change the default facade.run_delete_delay=5d to extend the number of days.
- Performance Center will not postpone results collation to a later time when using the Controller as the only load generator machine in the performance test run. Workaround: Manually copy the Diagnostics .eve files from the Diagnostics Server to the <LT_Result_Folder>\j2ee_bd Performance Center results folder.
- To view Diagnostics data in Analysis, use the Analysis option to open the complete data rather than the summary data.
- Performance Center cannot collate Collector metrics, Probe metrics, and Host metrics. This data will not appear in Analysis, but it is available online during the performance test run.
- If the Performance Center host cannot access the Diagnostics Server during data collation, the Performance Center collation for the Diagnostics metrics will fail.
Performance Trending
Hosts
- In ALM 11.50, the system health check in the System Health screen does not accurately report the host connectivity to ALM for Performance hosts.
- The remote patch installation feature should be used for installing Performance Center certified patches only.
- Before running the IP Wizard to define multiple IPs on a host, make sure to first add the host to ALM.
- The Installed Components tab of a Standalone Load Generator displays information that is not relevant to the load generator.
Secure Channels
- You cannot use the Host Security Manager utility to update security settings on UNIX load generators that use rsh (remote shell) to connect to the Controller.
- You cannot use the Host Security Manager utility to turn on the security mode of a load generator located over a firewall.
- When the load generator is located over a firewall, if the load generator and Controller have different security modes, communication cannot be established.
- On the Performance Center Server, use the Host Security Manager utility to change security settings, and not the Host Security Setup utility.
- When running in secure mode, the name of the host machine may be decrypted.
- When using the Host Security Manager utility to update security settings on a host, if a host is in non-secure mode, and you try to update it to non-secure mode, an update failure occurs.
- When trying to run a performance test over secure channels, if the security keys on the Controller and load generator do not match, the performance test run fails, and the status of the load generators changes to Resource Failure. To re-enable the load generators, you must manually reset the status on each affected load generator to Operational.
PAL
- Grouped transactions do not appear in the over time view. They do appear in select measurements.
- Dataset files uploaded into Performance Center should have names with a length of no more than 120 characters.
- In upgraded projects, you can publish only runs which were analyzed after the upgrade. Runs which were analyzed before the upgrade cannot be published.
General
- When setting the td password to include the equal sign (=), Performance Center functions, such as System Health and run load test, do not work. Avoid using = in the td user's password.
- If you configured ALM to work with a proxy server using NTLM authentication, Performance Center load tests fail to collate results if the Performance Center server was added to ALM with the Internal URL field value of the proxy server used for NTLM authentication. Workaround: When adding a Performance Center server to ALM, enter the direct URL to the Performance Center server in the Internal URL field.
- Using Performance Center APIs or building tools on top of ALM Performance Center schemas and entities is not supported.
- The maximum number of files that can be zipped for the collate or analysis process is limited by WinZip to 65,535. If you change the run-time logging settings to debug mode (Run-time Settings > General:Log > Extended log), it is likely, when running a performance test with a few hundred Vusers for more than an hour, that you will exceed this limit and WinZip will fail to create a zip file.
- To run LoadRunner on Windows 7 or Window Server 2008, you must have Administrator privileges and User Account Control (UAC) must be disabled.
- It is not recommended to install and uninstall a Load Generator standalone installation on the same machine with a VuGen standalone installation.
- The Load Generator cannot run Citrix scripts in service mode when the script was recorded using Citrix Client version 11.2 or higher.
- The Agent icon does not appear in Windows 2008 when the LoadRunner Agent service is launched.
- When LoadRunner Agent runs as service (magentservice.exe), files that are stored on remote network drives or referred to by UNC path cannot be accessed (script, parameter file, etc.). If you want to access files this way, run the LoadRunner Agent as process (magentproc.exe). If this is not possible, please contact Customer Support.
- The RealPlayer protocol is deprecated as of LoadRunner 11.50. In the next version, it will be discontinued.
- On the LoadRunner server, Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration must be disabled to view help content. It is enabled by default. (Control Panel->Administrative tools->Server manager->Configure IE ESC).
- HP Service Test 11.2 cannot be installed on top of a LoadRunner 11.50 installation. Workaround: Install Service Test 11.2 first then LoadRunner 11.50.
- In LoadRunner 11.50 Correlation (RBC, Rule and Comparison) support for Siebel protocol is disabled.
- When using Windows 2008 R2 and opening a snapshot from the step navigator in SAP GUI and Web protocols, the snapshots might not open automatically. Workaround: Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration must be disabled to view help content. It is enabled by default. (Control Panel->Administrative tools->Server manager->Configure IE ESC).
- Recording on 64-bit O/S's for 32-bit, and for 64-bit apps (running as a 64-bit application) is supported. Replay is only at 32-bit. See the support matrix and limitations above for more information.
- Firefox. If Firefox is set as the default browser, Obtain the proxy settings from the default browser (Run-time Settings > Internet Protocol > Proxy) does not work, and a direct connection is used.
- Data Format Extensions. A script that includes a DFE can only run on a load generator hosted on a Windows platform.
- l If you have implemented your own version of DFE, the definition of class HTTPEntity in DfeDefinitions.h file has been updated in LoadRunner 11.50. All customer's DFE extensions need be recompiled. (NO code change is required).
- For Single WinSock scripts from LoadRunner 11, the recording log is not displayed in VuGen 11.50.
- If you are using a PAC file for proxy configuration, it is required that the PAC script directs 127.0.0.1 to a direct connection and not through a proxy.
General VuGen
- SAP (Click and Script) recording. During recording, if you use a keyboard option instead of a UI element (for example, pressing Enter instead of clicking the log on button), the step may not be recorded. In general, when recording your script, it is recommended to use UI elements rather than keyboard options.
- Citrix snapshots. Black snapshots may appear during record or replay when using Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 or 4.5 (before Rollup Pack 3). Possible workaround: On the Citrix server select Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Terminal Services Configuration > Server Settings > Licensing and change the setting Per User or Per Device to the alternative setting (i.e. If it is set to Per User, change it to Per Device and vice versa.)
- For the following protocols, replay is supported but recording is no longer supported: Siebel DB2, Siebel MSSQL, Siebel Oracle, and Voice XML.
- In Test Result reports, you can only use the Export to HTML file utility for scripts replayed in version 9.50 and later. To generate an HTML report for scripts created with earlier versions, run the script again in the 9.50 version (or later) of the product.
- If you terminated the Protocol Advisor immediately after the detection process started, the Protocol Advisor may leave a zombie process of the detected application, causing all recordings and detection sessions that follow to fail. Workaround: Manually terminate the zombie process.
- The new Web snapshot model is backward compatible with previous versions of LoadRunner, however some snapshot data may be missing. If this occurs, regenerate the script.
- The JSON Data Format Extension does not work in UNIX environments.
- For protocols using XML, replay fails to create a request when a parameterized input argument contains the ampersand (&) character.
- Replay of COM script in VuGen fails when the dll registration is missing the "ThreadingModel" string under the InprocServer32 folder of the GUID.
- You cannot open a script if its full file path contains non-English characters.
Protocols
AJAX (Click and Script)
- ActiveX objects and Java applets are only supported on Windows platforms.
- Click and script protocols do not support pop-up windows.
- When using Windows 2003 R2, Ajax Click and Script steps do not generate after recording. Workaround: This should work if you disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration. It is enabled by default. (Control Panel->Administrative tools->Server manager->Configure IE ESC).
Citrix
- Installation of the registry patch is required for the support of all version of Citrix clients over 10.x. Additionally, you need to install Enable_Citrix_API.reg from the LoadRunner\dat folder on Vugen or Load Generator machines if a Citrix Client will be installed after installing LoadRunner.
- Running Citrix Vusers on virtual machines may adversely affect performance due to the sharing of physical resources.
- Citrix XenApp Desktop cannot be recorded with Citrix Web Access (formerly known as Citrix NFuse) if Desktop View (Desktop Toolbar) is enabled.
- Citrix protocol does not support environments that include NetScaler Access Gateway.
- Recording a Citrix NFuse script on IE9 is supported from Citrix client version 12.1.0.44.
- The Load Generator cannot run Citrix scripts in service mode when the script was recorded using Citrix Client version is 11.2 or higher.
- Load Generator cannot be used in service mode for Citrix protocol when the Citrix XenApp client 11.2 is used. Workaround: Use another version of Citrix client.
- To successfully record a multi protocol Citrix and Web script on XenApp5 only the SessionToken Citrix correlation rule should be enabled. The Session_Token Citrix correlation rule should be disabled.
- Citrix Clients 11.2 and higher do not support the TCP/IP mode in the Citrix > Login node of the Recording Options dialog box.
- When recording Citrix Web Access (formerly known as Citrix NFuse) applications, set the window size to "No preference" in the Citrix XenApp web portal preferences page.
- Recording Window Size and XenApp Plugin for Hosted Applications 11. The recording window size option does not work properly with the XenApp Plugin for Hosted Applications 11. The size of the client window is installed, but the server screen resolution is not. This is a Citrix Client limitation and will be fixed in future Citrix Client versions. Workaround: When recording, set the window size equal to the local screen resolution. When replaying/load testing, set the VuGen or Load Generator screen resolution to equal the resolution used when the script was recorded. To verify the recorded resolution, view the Window property in the <Script Folder>\default.cfg file.
Click and Script (All)
- Does not support VBScript.
- Does not support user actions on ActiveX objects and Macromedia Flash.
- Scalability is lower than the Web HTML protocol, depending on the size and functionality of the business process.
- Replay snapshots may differ from the actual Web page.
- Support of right-to-left languages is limited (e.g., bi-directional or reversed text may not be processed as expected). This is defined by the default operating system translation table.
- Recording an application in a specific language (e.g., French, Japanese) must be performed in a machine whose default locale (in Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options) is the same language.
- The locale of the load-generator machine, including the default non-Unicode character set, must be configured to be the same as that of the recording machine. It cannot be assumed that the UNIX default character set is the same as in Windows, even for US-English machines, and this has to be explicitly verified. For example, the default character set on some UNIX machines, such as Linux, is UTF-8.
- The Recording Options dialog box may take a long time to open.
- Web (Click and Script) no longer supports replay of Applets and ActiveX objects. This functionality is now part of the AJAX (Click and Script) protocol.
Flex (RTMP/AMF) Protocol
- Flex RTMP Tunneled
If your script contains more than one Flex_RTMP_tunneled_connect step, with the same gateway parameter, you must insert a disconnect step for the previous Flex_RTMP_tunneled_connect step before you connect again. For example:
Flex_rtmp_tunneled_connect("connect_step0",
"SessionId=0",
"Gateway=http://123.123.123.123:1935",
.
.
..LAST);
.
.
Flex_rtmp_tunneled_disconnect("disconnect_step0", "SessionId=0")
flex_rtmp_tunneled_connect("connect_step1","SessionId=1",
"Gateway=http://123.123.123.123:1935",
.
.
..LAST);
.
.
Flex_rtmp_tunneled_disconnect("disconnect_step0", "SessionId=1")
If a subsequent Flex_rtmp_tunneled_connect command has the same gateway parameter as the previous Flex_trtmp_tunneled_connect step and the Flex_rtmp_tunneled_disconnect step is omitted, the script will pause indefinitely.
- GraniteDS (Data Services)
To create a script in GraniteDS, select Use GraniteDS configuration from Recording Options > Flex > Configurations. For code generation and replay, first copy the core and relevant application jar files to the client machine and then specify these files in the Recording Options > Flex > Externalizable Objects node.
The core jars are:
- When switching between BlazeDS and GraniteDS parsing (Recording Options > Flex > Configuration), Vugen must be restarted.
- LoadRunner cannot serialize both GraniteDS and BlazeDS/LCDS messages in the same script.
- Flex RTMP messaging support. All limitations that apply to AMF3 parsing apply to externalizable objects over RTMP.
- flex_rtmp_receive_stream step. If the Generate flex_rtmp_receive_stream step option is enabled, all transactions, comments, and rendezvous points that you add from the Recording toolbar are added to the script after the flex_rtmp_receive_stream step in your script.
- Web diagnostics does not work for RTMP and RTMPT steps (even when the breakdown is enabled).
- Manually Adjusting Recorded Flex RTMP Steps
When the Generate flex_rtmp_receive_stream step option is cleared in the Flex:RTMP pane of the Recording Options dialog box, LoadRunner generates flex_rtmp_receive and flex_rtmp_send steps for every communication with the server. This ensures that user actions such as pause and seek, as well as automatic requests that the client performs when Dynamic Stream is in use, are included in the script, but this method also captures less-necessary lines of code that are difficult to read and may not be reliable during replay.
If you choose to clear the Generate flex_rtmp_receive_stream step option in order to capture user data, follow the instructions below to remove the unnecessary steps from your script.
- Search for the flex_rtmp_send step containing the initial play argument. For example:
flex_rtmp_send("send_step2",
"ConnectionID=10",
"Snapshot=tRTMP6.inf",
MESSAGE,
...
...
MESSAGE,
...
...
"Argument=<arguments><string>play</string><number>0</number><null/>"
...
LAST);
- Delete or comment out the flex_rtmp_receive steps that occur during streaming. For example:
//this is the start of the stream:
// flex_rtmp_receive("recv_step2",
// "ConnectionID=10",
// "Snapshot=tRTMP7.inf",
// CHANNEL,
// "ChunkStreamID=2",
// CHANNEL,
// "ChunkStreamID=2",
// CHANNEL,
// "ChunkStreamID=4",
// CHANNEL,
// "ChunkStreamID=2",
// LAST);
//
// flex_rtmp_receive("recv_step3",
// "ConnectionID=10",
// "Snapshot=tRTMP8.inf",
// CHANNEL,
// "ChunkStreamID=5",
// CHANNEL,
// ...
// ...
- You can also remove certain flex_rtmp_send steps that are not related to user actions, such as "user control message" types. For example:
// flex_rtmp_send("send_step3",
// "ConnectionID=10",
// "Snapshot=tRTMP9.inf",
// MESSAGE,
// "DataType=user control message",
// "EventType=set buffer length",
// "MessageStreamID=1",
// "BufferLength=100",
// LAST);
- When you find a flex_rtmp_send step that represents a user action that you want to keep in your script, do the following:
i. Manually add a flex_rtmp_receive_stream step before the send step.
- Make sure that the ConnectionID argument has the same value as the steps you removed above it.
- The Snapshot argument is not relevant for the manually added step.
- You can use the ContinueToNexStepAfter = <msec> argument to control the minimum play duration of the stream to download before continuing to the next step.
ii. Determine the flex_rtmp_send steps that represent the user actions you want to keep. These will likely include arguments such as pauseRaw, pause, seek and play2 (for Dynamic Stream). For example:
flex_rtmp_send("send_step5",
"ConnectionID=10",
"Snapshot=tRTMP62.inf",
MESSAGE,
"DataType=command message amf3",
"ChunkStreamID=8",
"MessageStreamID=1",
"Argument=<arguments><string>pauseRaw</string><number>0</number><null/>"
"<boolean>true</boolean><number>12000</number></arguments>",
LAST);
iii. Determine whether there are some extra flex_rtmp_send steps that you can remove. For example, if you dragged a button to seek in the stream, subtle jerks in the motion may be recorded as separate pause and seek actions. In these cases, may not need all of them. Keep only those that describe the desired operations.
iv. Identify the flex_rtmp_receive step that indicates that the server has received the end of the user action. For example:
//this is the confirmation from the server on the "seek" command.
flex_rtmp_receive("recv_step55",
"ConnectionID=10",
"Snapshot=tRTMP68.inf",
CHANNEL,
"ChunkStreamID=2",
CHANNEL,
"ChunkStreamID=2",
LAST);
- Repeat steps ii- iv for each set of unnecessary receive data and required user actions in your script.
Java (All)
- Java Record Replay Protocol: Recording of JMS applications requires JDK version 1.6u32 or lower.
- Java over HTTP Protocol: Requires the JDK version 1.5 or higher.
- When recording on Internet Explorer 8 using the Java protocol, you must first close all instances of Internet Explorer before LoadRunner opens an Explorer instance for the record session.
Listing Directory Service (LDAP)
- If an LDAP version 3 script fails during replay, modify the mldpa_logon_ex statement to specify the version number by adding "Version=3" after "URL=.."
- When recording LDAP scripts, the binary parameter values for certain LDAP functions (such as mldap_add or mldap_modify) are not recorded. Recording of binary parameters is part of the protocol's extended functionality and is not supported by VuGen.
Media Player (MMS)
Media Player scripts fail with the error: Error -86801:Host access denied, <hostname> not available or missing. Workaround: Call the mms_disable_host_check function in all Media Player scripts.
Microsoft .NET
- Applications that use the .NET Remoting Framework and are executed in CLR 2 (.NET frameworks 2/3/3.5), might crash during recording. During a crash you will receive a message containing the strings Version=4.x.x.x, and "is not registered for activation". Potential Workaround: In the Microsoft .NET: Recording user interface under Support for previous.NET version, select "Emulate previous .NET versions in transport level", and then record again.
- When the application under test retrieves a server-activated object by calling new RemoteObject(), VuGen generates a RemotingServices.Connect function.
- Applications using multiple processes or multiple application domains are only partially supported.
- Shared DLLs must be specified in the Recording Options only. Changes made in the Run-Time Settings to the list of shared DLLs have no effect.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
- Clipboard sharing supports only short simple textual content.
- When recording with RDP Agent, applications which were developed using CBuilder may not record properly.
- Recording on RDP client versions 6.0, 6.1, or 7.0 will fail if the remote machine is running Windows Server 2008 with terminal services.
Workaround:
- RDP does not support 32 bit color depth. If recording uses this color depth, Vugen automatically switches to a lower color depth and a "[RDP Analyzer Warning ( 790: 418)] 32 bit color depth is not supported, switch to lower one" . warning log item appears in the Recording Window.
Silverlight
- REST services do not generate Silverlight service calls. However, they can be recorded and replayed.
- You cannot edit the WSDL location in the Protocol and Security Scenario dialog box.
- The Update button in Silverlight Service node of the Recording Options dialog box is not working (always reporting success).
- Duplex (Polling) Binding for WCF Web Services is not supported.
- Silverlight 4 Client is supported, however applications developed using the new communication features such as net.tcp binding are not supported.
- VuGen snapshot viewer does not support Silverlight controls.
- The Silverlight Protocol does not support applications which use Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
TruClient
- TruClient protocol versions. If you edit a TruClient script using a later version of LoadRunner than the one on which you recorded the script, it may fail to replay in some cases. Before modifying the script, save a backup copy of the script. Workaround: If the replay fails, rerecord the script using the latest version of the TruClient protocol.
- TruClient. Firefox Security Warning dialog boxes are not displayed in TruClient during script development.
- The Ajax TruClient for FF protocol can only be used with applications that support the Mozilla Firefox browser.
- The Ajax TruClient for IE requires that IE9 is installed on the server.
- TrueClient for will not record "mouse overs" when the element has a CSS rule of "Mouse Hover". Workaround: instead of mouse hovering, click the elements to open the drop down (the clicks are recorded).
- TruClient protocol step types and arguments are not localized.
- Ajax TruClient for IE does not support IP spoofing.
- Ajax TruClient for IE does not support modem speed.
- TruClient General Strings are not localized in the Japanese version.
- TruClient protocol step types and arguments are not localized.
- Only scripts from version LoadRunner 11 patch 2 or above can be opened in LoadRunner 11.50 version of vugen.
- TruClient FF does not support Kerberos authentication. If the server also supports NTLM.
- TruClient FF will automatically move the authentication to NTLM and continue working.
WAP
Web Services
- For large SOAP envelopes, Record and Replay snapshots are disabled.
- The Import SOAP feature is not supported for envelopes containing a single element larger than 500KB.
- Recording requests with attachments or security is not supported.
- For Axis toolkit, Web service calls that include both attachments and security are not supported.
- For .NET toolkit, SOAP version 1.2 is not supported for asynchronous calls.
- You can enter text strings up to 10 KB to encode to base 64. If your string is larger, use the Get from file option.
- VuGen supports Web Service messages over JMS message Queue, but does not support JMS Topics.
- JMS Bindings Extensions are not supported.
- All services in your script should have the same security scenario. This can be configured via the Protocols and Security tab.
- Asynchronous Web Service calls and custom user handlers are not supported for WCF.
- LoadRunner cannot replay scripts containing the soa_xml_validate function.
- When using "update service", steps that are already in the script will not display the updated properties (in the step argument view) until you close and reopen the app. After you reopen the app, step arguments are updated.
- If the script is open when performing "update service", then on the script view arguments, the app throws an exception. Workaround: Close the script file while running "update service", or reopen the test after running "update service".
- A Web Service script might not open when you import the WDSL with the Axis toolkit. Workaround: Import the WDSL with .Net toolkit.
- If there is a problem recreating the scripts, do the following:
- When you import a WSDL file into a Web Services script whose name contains non-English characters, if there are errors in the file, the error report is empty. Workaround: Rename and save the script using only English characters.
Protocol SDK
SAP (Click and Script)
- You cannot define transactions to measure time of a subset of steps performed in a modal dialog.
- During recording, if a user double-clicks on a tree-view tree cell outside of its text, VuGen records "Select" instead of "Activate." This results in a missing POST in replay.
- If the list of retrieved values contains a scroll bar, you cannot select an item that requires scrolling to retrieve it from the server.
- Scalability is lower than the SAP Web protocol, depending on the size and functionality of the business process.
- Does not support the Replace with Alternate Navigation run-time setting.
- In certain SAP environments (such as 6.20 and 6.40), the replay fails for tests that call the web_element function and select an element whose tag name is TD.
Web (HTTP/HTML)
- In previous versions of LoadRunner, the C type "char" is considered as "signed char". In LoadRunner 11.50 and up it is considered as "unsigned char". This means that if the user used "char" without specifying whether it is signed or unsigned, and performed arithmetic operations on this variable, then the results may be different when comparing LoadRunner 11.50 to old LoadRunner versions.
Web Click and Script
Async
IPv6
Support for IPv6 is available for the protocols shown in the table above. The support for Web HTTP protocol has the following limitations:
- FTP from Web is not supported
- Web Breakdown is not supported
- Kerberos is not supported
- Spoofing from Web is not supported
- PAC file is not supported
- An explicit IP (in IPv6 format) in a URL argument cannot be used. For example, the following step will fail in replay:
web_url("IPv6",
"URL=http://[2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334]/",
"Resource=0",
"RecContentType=text/html",
"Referer=",
"Snapshot=t1.inf",
"Mode=HTML",
LAST);
64-bit recording
The environment for 64-bit recording must be as follows:
In general 64-bit applications ported from a 32-bit client version should work identically to the 32-bit client.
However, there is a small risk that new clients will use the power of native 64-bit apps. For example, when using 64-bit long types for Identifiers in DB tables, the identifier value will be cut and the query will fail.
There are also specific limitations/requirements for some of the protocols, as described in the table below:
Protocol Support Matrix
GUI Vusers
- LoadRunner supports GUI Vuser scripts created using HP QuickTest. GUI Vuser scripts created in WinRunner are no longer supported.
- Windows Load Generator machines can only run one GUI Vuser at a time. To run multiple GUI Vusers in a load test, you need to open a terminal server session for each GUI Vuser. For more information, see the HP LoadRunner Controller User Guide.
Analysis
- Analysis fails when trying to connect to a version of the ALM server which is different from the server you are connected to in your browser.
Workaround: Connect to the other version of ALM in your browser and download the client files by clicking on the Application Lifecycle Management link.- Analysis currently supports Microsoft SQL Server versions 2005 and later.
- If you are using Microsoft SQL Server 2000, you need to either migrate Analysis data, or upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The following tasks describe how to perform the migrating and upgrading procedures:
To migrate old Analysis data to an SQL 2005 server:
- From the SQL Server Management Studio, using Object Explorer, connect to an instance of SQL Server Database Engine.
- Expand Databases, right-click Analysis database, select Tasks\Copy Database.
- Follow the instructions in the wizard.
To upgrade SQL 2000 to SQL 2005:
- Backup Analysis database on the SQL 2000 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966495.aspx)
- Uninstall SQL 2000.
- Install SQL 2005.
- Restore Analysis data from backup. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177429(SQL.90).aspx).
- If you are using your own policy in an MS SQL server, you may need to add your own account to the Analysis database template (in the <LR Installation>\bin\dat folder).
- When exporting Analysis reports to MS Word, take into account that the content load may affect the table format within the document.
- The following Analysis default settings have been modified: Include Think Time is disabled and Generate complete data only is enabled.
- There is a limitation with MS Access and SQL queries when filtering a large number of transactions (greater than 100).
- Even after running the <Language> User Interface Pack, the Analysis UI data generated from the sample session (in the <LR Installation>\tutorial folder) will display in English. Filtering on the graphs will fail. Workaround: Re-generate the graphs and then the corresponding language from the <Language> User Interface Pack will display and filtering will work.
Mobile
Mobile Sniffer Agent. The Mobile Sniffer Agent included with LoadRunner 11.50 supports the following operating systems:
- Windows. Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008.
To run the Mobile Sniffer Agent on a Windows operating system you also must install WinPcap.
WinPcap should be installed using the default settings of the installer. The following versions of WinPcap are supported:
Version 4.0.2. (can be installed from HP ALM Performance Center Additional Components installation disk - DVD 2)
Version 4.1.2. (web download)
- Mac. Mac OSX 10.6.5
- Linux. Red Hat 5 Enterprise
Multilingual Support
Internationalization Limitations:
- You can only work with localized versions of Performance Center that match the localization of the corresponding ALM version. For example, to work with Performance Center in Korean, your ALM version must also be in Korean.
- You cannot type Japanese characters in the ALM Login window Password field or in the Document Generator. Workaround: Paste text from the clipboard.
- Opening and updating a project that contains characters different from those set in the ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale may cause irreversible damage.
- The InputLanguage inserted from an external component to ALM must be the same as the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale. For example, you cannot insert a QuickTest Professional script that contains Japanese characters in a client that runs on an OSLanguage with ClientOSLocale or ClientOSAdvanceLocale that is not Japanese.
- When sending mail that contains non-English characters from the ALM/Quality Center client, it must be sent from the ClientOSLocale and ClientOSAdvanceLocale that are the same as the mail characters locale.
- To send mail that contains non-English characters, the MailServerVersion and MailClientVersion mail server must support non-English characters.
- To display non-English characters, the OSLanguage needs to include the proper fonts for the language.
- The SiteAdminDBCollation and ProjectDBCollation must be set to the same language as the data insert. For example, inserting Japanese characters in a Korean collation is not supported.
- The Spell Checker tool is available only in English.
- Due to a problem in the JDBC driver's specific version, using Chinese and Japanese collation in MS-SQL may cause an error while executing some actions.
- You cannot create ALM/Quality Center projects with Thai characters in the project name.
- The number of double-byte characters you can enter in a ALM edit box may be more limited than the number of characters specified in the relevant error messages. The number of characters that can actually be used depends on the database definitions and the character set collation that is being used. For example, one character can occupy 3 bytes when using Japanese characters with a database that is defined to work with UTF8.
- When you generate a document in the Document Generator that includes test scripts with non-English characters, these characters may appear as random ASCII text. Workaround: Select As Icons for the Document Generator Attachment Embedding Options (and not As expanded text).
- ALM/Quality Center versions 9.2 and later support LDAP authentication using non-English character sets. Previously, login failed when passwords for LDAP-authenticated users contained non-English characters. To use non-English character sets, set the LDAP_CHARSET parameter in Site Administration to Default or add the relevant value listed in the Basic Encoding Set list (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html).
- Hebrew locale: On Hebrew locale client machines, to ensure that ALM memo fields (for example, Description, Comments, Rich Text) are displayed properly, configure the following settings in the Control Panel > Regional and Language Options window:
Localization Limitations:
- To display a localized UI, the OSLanguage of the client must use the same language as ALM.
- The UI language is defined by the ALM server and only one language can be defined per server.
- ALM Language Pack must be installed and operated on Windows where Windows native language (MLU*) is identical to the MUI* language.
- An ALM project created in an English edition cannot be upgraded to a localized edition.
- In the French localized version on Windows XP (SP3), you may not be able to export defects to Microsoft Excel.
HP Software Support
You can visit the HP Software support web site at:
www.hp.com/go/hpsoftwaresupport
This web site provides contact information and details about the products, services, and support that HP Software offers. For more information, visit the HP Support web site at: HP Software Support Online.
HP Software support provides customer self-solve capabilities. It provides a fast and efficient way to access interactive technical support tools needed to manage your business. As a valued support customer, you can benefit by being able to:
- Search for knowledge documents of interest
- Submit and track progress on support cases
- Submit enhancement requests online
- Download software patches
- Manage a support contract
- Look up HP support contacts
- Review information about available services
- Enter discussions with other software customers
- Research and register for software training
To access the Self-solve knowledge base, visit the Self-solve knowledge search home page.
Note: Most of the support areas require that you register as an HP Passport user and sign in. Many also require an active support contract. To find more information about support access levels, go to: Access levels.
To register for an HP Passport ID, go to: HP Passport Registration.
Legal Notices
© Copyright 1992 - 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license.
The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
For information about third-party and/or open source license agreements, see the Licenses directory on the product installation media.
Adobe® and Acrobat® are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows® XP are U.S registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
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