HP Application Lifecycle Management 11.00 Readme
Software version: 11.00
Publication date: October 2010 Second Edition
This file provides information about HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) 11.00:
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.
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 11.00, 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) Platform 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 11.00 release, but there may be updates for ALM 11.00 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 Platform System Requirements
This section includes recommended and supported environments for ALM Platform. It also describes system configurations for installing ALM Platform for Quality Center Starter Edition.
- IPv6 support: ALM 11.00 will work on IPv6 enabled systems. However, ALM is still developed within an IPv4 environment. This means that in ALM 11.00:
- Unix support:
- 64 Bit support:
- If you use a WebLogic or WebSphere application server on a 64-bit operating system, ensure that JVM is running in 64-bit mode. For instructions on how to install and configure WebLogic and WebSphere in 64-bit mode, refer to the vendor's documentation.
It is also recommended to increase permsize and heapsize. For more information, refer to Performance Tuning Best Practices for ALM at HP Software Product Manuals.
- In the next release of HP ALM, we plan to move to 64 bit configuration exclusively for ALM Platform.
Note: If you use HP ALM Performance Center, see HP ALM Performance Center System Requirements.
Recommended ALM Platform Configurations
The following table includes recommended configurations for each operating system.
Supported ALM Platform Configurations
The following applications are supported for installing ALM Platform 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 Platform Configurations.
ALM Platform Configurations for Quality Center Starter Edition
This section describes the system requirements for installing ALM Platform for Quality Center Starter Edition.
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.
- You can work with the ALM client using a remote desktop.
HP ALM Performance Center System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for installing ALM Platform for Performance Center, and Performance Center components.
ALM Platform Configurations for Performance Center
This section describes the system requirements for installing ALM Platform with Performance Center.
Performance Center Server Configurations
This section describes the system requirements for installing a Performance Center Server.
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.
Unix Standalone Load Generator Configurations
This section describes the supported operating systems and CPU types for installing a standalone Load Generator on Unix systems.
Standalone VuGen and Standalone Analysis Configurations
This section describes the system requirements for installing Standalone VuGen and Standalone Analysis.
VMware ESX Configurations
ALM Platform can be deployed on a VMware ESX 4.0 server. The system configurations of each virtual machine are the same as the ALM Platform server system configurations.
Notes and Limitations
ALM Platform Installation
- Windows Systems:
- 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.
- JBoss: Entering a name for the JBoss service user with non-English characters causes an error.
Workaround: Use only English characters for the JBoss service user name.- JBoss: ALM does not check if the default heap size allocated to JBoss exceeds the actual RAM size.
- 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:
- A Mercury Tours shortcut is created in the Start menu, even if the application is not selected during the server configuration. Clicking the shortcut results displays an error message.
- After you install ALM Platform, 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.- Quality Center Starter Edition: Microsoft SQL Express database server is installed on the system drive, even if you selected to install ALM on a different drive.
- Quality Center Starter Edition: If you are installing Starter Edition on Windows XP Service Pack 3, and the server does not have Microsoft SQL server installed (Microsoft SQL 2005 or later), the installation fails as it attempts to install Microsoft SQL Express 2005.
Workaround: Refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968749 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958897 (for localized windows). For more details about Microsoft SQL Express 2005, refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910229.- JBoss-IIS Integration on Windows 2008: If you are installing ALM on Windows 2008 with JBoss as the application server and Microsoft IIS 7 as the web server, you must run the following command after the server configuration completes:
%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\intesrv\appcmd set config "<Website name>/" -section:system.webServer/handlers -[name='ISAPI-dll'].responseBufferLimit:0 -commit:apphost
Replace <Website name> with the name of the website to which you added the ALM Platform application. For example, Default Web Site.
- JBoss-IIS Integration on Windows 2008: When navigating to the ALM login page, if your browser downloads a file instead of opening the login page, you must configure the IIS settings to activate the ISAPI-dll handler. Run the following command:
%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config "<Website name>/quality_center" -section:handlers /accesspolicy:Read,Script,Execute
Replace <Website name> with the name of the website to which you added the ALM Platform application. For example, Default Web Site.
- Windows 2003 32-bit in non-English European language: After completing ALM Platform configuration, ALM Platform does not start. Java fails to start with the default object heap allocation.
Workaround: Install Windows update from the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;971812ALM Client Installation
- The following limitation applies to administrator users on Windows Vista and 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.- On Windows Vista machines, a non-administrator user, or an administrator user with UAC enabled, deploys ALM on a workstation. Then, if ALM is run by an administrator user, or with UAC disabled, or with Internet Explorer run as administrator, the client is deployed again.
- 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 ALM Platform, 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 Platform server name>[<:port number>]/qcbin/Apps/
In WebGate Customization, do the following:
Project Upgrade
- Project Repository Migration:
- Case sensitivity: A case-sensitive file server with a case-insensitive database server may cause an error during the upgrade process.
- The repository migration displays a warning when the thumbs.db file is detected in what seems to be an empty folder.
Workaround: Display all hidden files and then manually delete the thumbs.db file. Resume the migration process.- 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 11.00 server, and restore the project on another ALM 11.00 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 11.00 server.
Note: There is no limitation between an ALM 11.00 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.- 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: Fields of type Date are converted in ALM 11.00 to type DateTime. If any of these fields contain the value "0", ALM client may crash.
Workaround: Search for all rows that contain DateTime fields with the value "0", and replace with the current date/time.- Database schema: When deleting extra user columns from a database schema, verify that they are not defined in the SYSTEM_FIELD table.
- While running the verification, repair, or upgrade process, if you abort the process, the project will be corrupted.
- 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: When working with a case-sensitive SQL database, the upgrade process fails if the exception file contains an extra table in which the name is in lowercase.
- Microsoft SQL database: Project verification does not include a check that the Microsoft SQL database administrator user is the owner of the project 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 11.00, 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
- HP ALM Performance Center documentation will be available in the Documentation Library after you install Performance Center.
- The HP Application Lifecycle Management Tutorial will be available with ALM 11.00 Patch 1.
- You can view video demonstrations of main ALM features by choosing a movie from Help > Product Feature Movies. Note that the Quality Center 10.00 video demonstrations were not updated to reflect the most recent user interface changes. These videos are still relevant as they do demonstrate the concepts of the features.
- 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
- 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.- The value of the Site Configuration parameter REPLACE_TITLE cannot contain a percent (%) character. Users are not able to perform add or delete operations for entities in the Defects module if this character is included.
- When applying the REPLACE_TITLE parameter to the Management, Test Resources, and Dashboard modules, only the module name in the ALM sidebar is replaced.
- You cannot import ALM project export files (.qcp files) to ALM 11.00 if they were created in an earlier version of ALM/Quality Center.
- 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.
- In the Site Users tab of Site Administration, you cannot clear the date in the Automatic Deactivation Date dialog box.
- Site Administration shows incorrect server time.
- Project Planning and Tracking (PPT): After clearing the Automatic Calculation State option in the Project Details tab for a project that has been enabled for PPT calculations, it continues to be included in the calculations.
Workaround: Delete the entry for that project from the QPM_PROJECTS_DATA table.Project Customization
- Data-hiding filter. After deleting user-defined fields from a project, the fields are not cleared from the data-hiding filter.
- Permissions. When defining Test Plan permissions, you can no longer set that only the owner of a design step can delete it.
- Permissions: The following limitation applies in upgraded projects, where user groups are assigned a Create permission without a Modify 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 also the Modify permission.- Windows XP: When opening Project Customization, the 'Service of type Mercury...' error may occur.
Workaround: Close the error box and retry.- Project Entities: Unable to modify the History settings for the Test Set entity.
- Project Entities: The New List button in the Project Entities page has been removed.
Workaround: Create new lists in the Project Lists page.- Project Planning and Tracking: In the KPI Analysis tab, only users that belong to the TDAdmin group can customize the breakdown graphs.
- 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 11.00 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.
- McAfee SiteAdvisor: If your client machine runs on Windows XP, and the McAfee SiteAdvisor add-on is installed in Internet Explorer, you may be unable to install and run Site Administration and the HP ALM Client Registration add-in.
Workaround: In the Internet Explorer Add-on Manager, disable the McAfee SiteAdvisor add-on.Cross Project Customization
- When customizing requirement types in a linked project, user-defined fields applied from the template project cannot be set as required fields.
Workaround: In the template project, set the user-defined fields as required fields, and then apply the customization to the linked project.- Project customization applied to linked projects from a template project can be edited using Open Test Architecture (OTA).
- Cross project customization reports that are saved as HTML files may display on another machine without formatting.
Workaround: Save the reports as the Web Archive, single file (*.mht) type.- When working in projects that are linked to a template, you cannot set a data-hiding filter for any system or template user group.
- The maximum length of the RSC_TYPE field is 80 characters.
General
- Product Feature Movies: If you use a WebLogic application server, Product Feature Movies in .wmv format may open as text.
Workaround: Define the MIME type mapping for the WebLogic domain on which ALM is installed, as follows:On the ALM Platform machine, under <WebLogic_domain>/config/, open or create the mimemappings.properties file, and add the following line:
wmv=application/octet-stream
Note: mimemappings.properties is the default file name used by WebLogic domain configuration. To verify the actual file name, in the WebLogic application console, in the domains tree, select the applicable domain. Then click the Configuration tab > Web Applications tab, and look up the Mime Mapping File field.
For more information, refer to the WebLogic product documentation.
- 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 v11.00 Benchmark document, available in a future ALM patch.
- Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP/Vista: 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:
- 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
- Workflow script editor: Available from Customization, when viewing the Workflow page
- 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
- Dependencies tab: When an entity is checked out, relations to other entities that do not exist are not marked as broken relations.
Workaround: Check-in the test.- Synchronization fails after a baseline is imported from a version- controlled to non version-controlled project. Synchronization is launched from the source project (version-controlled).
- 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 before you copy and paste them.- Attachments: If a test has attachments, but the corresponding files in the project repository were manually deleted, the test cannot be checked out.
Workaround: Remove the entries in the CROS_REF table that point to the deleted files.Releases Module
- History is not preserved for release folders, releases, or cycles in the Releases module.
- When working in right-to-left mode in a non-memo type field in the Releases module, the text is left-aligned while the field is in focus.
- The Progress and Quality graphs may not automatically reflect changes made to entities assigned to releases and cycles.
Workaround: Click the Refresh button to update the data in the graph.Releases Module - Project Planning and Tracking
- 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.
- When making milestone changes, history is not preserved.
- Changes to scope item content are not saved if you move to another release immediately after making the changes.
Workaround: After changing scope item content, move to another scope item or another tab in the same release before moving to another release.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.
- You cannot import a library that contains entities with special characters, for example: /\:"?'<>|*%. Entering special characters in ALM is not allowed. However, in Quality Center 9.0 or below, it was possible to add special characters by using either OTA or the HP ALM Microsoft Excel Add-in.
- Sharing of libraries is not supported between version control enabled projects and non-version control enabled projects.
- When importing a library that includes user-defined fields that are the same in the source project and the target project, they must be of the same length.
- When creating a baseline, if an attachment or script is missing from the file system, a warning is written to the ALM Platform log file. The baseline is created nonetheless.
- When synchronizing a library with a baseline that includes an automated test converted from a manual test, the test is not synchronized.
- 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
- The history of the Target Release and Target Cycle fields for a requirement is not recorded.
- Rich Text: The following limitation occurs when setting rich text as a required field in project customization. When creating a new requirement, and the rich text field is empty, the Required Fields dialog box displays the field as a string field and not as an editor.
Workaround: When the Required Fields dialog box opens, click Cancel. Edit the rich text field and then submit the requirement.Risk-Based Quality Management
- Upgrading projects: When upgrading projects from Quality Center 9.2, the following data is not preserved, as it is now obsolete:
- The testing time assigned for each Failure Probability at Full Testing Level, both in Project Customization and in overrides for individual requirements.
- The Testing Policy grid, both in Project Customization and in overrides for individual requirements.
To work with Risk-Based Quality Management after the upgrade, it is recommended that you perform assessment for the new Functional Complexity assessment factor on your assessment requirements and then analyze your analysis requirements.
- 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
- Imported reference activities are displayed in the diagram as regular activities.
- 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 subject folder attachments cannot be opened by clicking the attachment icon in the indicator column.
Workaround: Open the attachment from the Attachments tab.- If you try to add test parameters to a test that is locked by another user, an incorrect error displays.
- Unable to associate a data table for a QuickTest test with an .xlsx file. The test run fails.
Test Resources Module
- If you set the data hiding filter for test resources to hide the Resource File name field, the field is still visible in the Resource Viewer tab.
- You cannot upload a file to a resource if the file name contains a comma. You also cannot upload a folder to a resource if the folder name contains a comma.
- When uploading a folder with a file that has the same name as a file in the resource folder, the file is uploaded without deleting the original file.
Test Lab Module
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.
- When you add or update an entity at the same time as the text search is being enabled, you may receive an error message. However, after you close the error message, ALM adds or updates the entity correctly.
- 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://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/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.
- Oracle 11: Searchable fields cannot be updated if <schema_name>.<text search index name> is more than 40 characters.
- Oracle: An error occurs when the search string contains 'NOT' in uppercase.
Workaround: Use 'not' is lowercase.Defects Module
Dashboard Module
- 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.
- Sharing Graphs: Unable to view a shared graph from WebLogic application server.
- 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: To integrate QuickTest Professional 10.00 with ALM 11.00, you must install the HP Quality Center Client Side Connectivity Add-in.
- QuickTest Professional: 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.
- QuickTest Professional: On Windows Vista and Windows 7 workstations, if DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled, test scripts are not displayed.
Workaround: Disable DEP.- QuickTest Professional: For a keyword-driven component, Microsoft Windows Vista and 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: ' style="font-size:10pt">bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff'- QuickTest Professional: Opening components in upgraded projects after repository migration may take a long time.
- QuickTest Professional: 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.
- QuickTest Professional: 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.
- QuickTest Professional: 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.
- QuickTest Professional: When launching a QuickTest Professional script from ALM, the user running the script must have read/write permissions for the system cache folder.
- QuickTest Professional: Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Vista 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.
- 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, or component parameter, 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
- 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 Quality Center, 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.
- Test Plan: If a test includes a call to another test, clicking the link to the called test does not trigger the expected action.
- Creating Users: If LDAP is enabled, you cannot add users with API.
- Defects: When generating a standard defects report, workflow actions are being called twice.
- Defects: When setting defect comments to read-only, the Add Comment button is not disabled.
- Defects: In New Defect dialog box, the following buttons trigger incorrect actions: Clear, Spelling Check, Spelling Options, and Thesaurus.
- Defects: When changing view setting to show\hide the grid filters, the act_HideColumnFiltering action is triggered instead of _dxact_GridFilters1_WebDefectFrm.
- Defects: When operations are launched from the Find Similar Defects dialog box, action names show the NewBugAdditionalCommands prefix instead of NewBug.
- 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.
- The Attachment_CanDelete workflow event is not triggered in the Management module.
- Template Projects: After you create a template from a project with workflow scripts, you must convert all the workflow scripts. You do this in a single session using the Convert dialog box, which runs only the first time you open the Workflow Script Editor after creating the template.
- Existing Open Test Architecture applications that change data will 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 in this release. 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 Quality Center 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.- You cannot access the Fields object for a particular entity type if no entity of that type is currently selected in the user interface. In previous versions of Quality Center, a dummy object was returned.
Workaround: Before using this object make sure that it exists using the IsObject function.- 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 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 11.00, 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 11.00 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.
- Importing and sharing libraries:
- You may encounter problems while working with baseline import or synchronization functionality for libraries containing application areas. To avoid these problems, make sure to connect to the project from QuickTest Professional before importing or synchronizing.
- Synchronization of business process tests\flows: While synchronizing components, the order may change and test will be corrupted.
- You may encounter problems while working with baseline import or synchronization functionality for libraries containing business process tests, flows, or components. Full business process testing support for these options is planned for an upcoming ALM 11.00 patch.
- Components located in the Component Requests folder are not included in the library import process.
- Working with version-controlled projects:
- In a version-controlled project, the status of a business process test is updated according to the status of checked-in components only.
- In a version-controlled project, a Check Out confirmation request opens when you switch to the Automation tab of a checked-in component. This message should be displayed only if you try to edit the content in the Automation tab.
- When working with QuickTest keyword-driven components in a version-controlled project, if after adding one or more steps to a component, you view the comparison of component steps when comparing component versions or baselines, all of the steps that existed before updating the component are marked as deleted and all of the steps currently in the component are marked as new.
- Canceling a New Component Request: To cancel a New Component Request, permissions set for the user in ALM Project Customization must include permissions to delete business components.
- Copying and pasting components:
- Running business process tests:
- The Business Process Testing run performance improvements made in this version are:
- Available only when running a business process test from the Test Lab. (Not available when running a business process test in Change Detection mode.)
- Supported only for scripted and keyword-driven (business) components. If a business process test includes components other than these types, the test does not use the improved performance functionality while running.
- On a Windows 2008 server, when running a business process test or flow on a remote machine, an Access Denied error message may appear. This can occur when DCOM permission settings are incorrectly set on the remote host, when the user on the ALM client machine is not configured on the remote machine, or when the user does not have permissions to run the relevant remote agent via DCOM. (This is not a product limitation but a standard Windows DCOM security settings procedure.)
Workaround: The user on the ALM client machine should be configured on the remote machine, and should have permissions to run the relevant remote agent via DCOM. The user should also have the same password on both machines.- To run business process tests on a remote host, the ALM client must be installed on the remote host.
- To enable ALM to run QuickTest Professional tests on a remote host, open QuickTest Professional on the remote host and select Allow other HP products to run tests and components in the Options dialog box > Run pane.
For more information, refer to the HP QuickTest Professional User Guide.
- Running a business process test with an empty flow: A business process test that contains an empty flow will fail when it is run.
Workaround: Add a component to the empty flow or remove the flow from the test.- Running business components in Manual Runner: Encrypted parameter values are displayed as asterisks.
- Running business process tests manually: When you select to continue a manual run and then you make changes in the Manual Runner dialog box, the changes in the run are always saved (you are not asked whether to save the changes when you exit the Manual Runner).
- Renaming scripted components: If you rename a scripted component from ALM to the identical component name but with different capitalization, the object is not recognized when opening the component in QuickTest, and it is shown as Unknown in the Keyword View.
Workaround: Rename the component to a different name and then return it to the component name you want with the desired capitalization. For example, if the component name was login, and you renamed it to Login, it is not recognized in the Keyword View in QuickTest. Rename the component to oldlogin, and then back to Login. The Keyword View then displays it correctly.- Incorrect display of parameters in an upgraded project: In an upgraded project, the list of parameters for a component is duplicated in the Details pane of the Run Results.
- Workflow: This limitation applies in a version control enabled project, when workflow events AddComponentToTest and RemoveComponentFromTest contain code which modifies fields of a component when it is added to or removed from a test. If you try to add or remove a checked in component, an error message displays. This message is displayed due to components that are checked in and therefore cannot be modified. This message appears only if you try to add a component to a business process test or to a flow. It does not appear when adding a flow to a business process test.
Workaround: Check out a business component before adding it to a business process test or flow.- Microsoft Windows 7/Vista: In the Components Steps tab, an error occurs when clicking the Automation tab.
Workaround: Set the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) flag to AlwaysOff. To do so, run Command Prompt as an administrator and paste: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff.Additional Notes and Limitations - Performance Center
Installation
- Before undeploying the Performance Center extension you should delete all the Performance Center-enabled projects and remove the LAB_PROJECT project from Site Administration. After undeploying the Performance Center extension, those projects cannot be removed, which may cause redeployment of the Performance Center extension to fail.
- If Oracle is installed on the macine 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.
- Performance Center no longer supports Windows 2000.
- Performance Center no longer supports SQL 2005 Database (mode 80).
- For standalone installations, you must install the prerequisite application, .NET Framework 3.5, manually.
- During the post-installation configuration of the Performance Center Server or Performance Center host, some warning messages relating to registration failure may appear in the configuration log. You can ignore these messages.
- 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.
- Uninstalling the Performance Center host may take a long time.
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.
- In ALM you can add fields with a required value. The HP ALM Performance Center Migration tool does not support such operations in Performance Center entities.
Performance Test Design
Performance Test Execution
- To create a custom group with permissions to create a Performance Test Set, create the custom group based on the Performance Advisor group or higher, and then add or remove permissions as needed.
- Responsiveness of the system may be affected by the IIS Idle Timeout setting. The default of this setting is 20 minutes. We recommend setting the timeout to 480 minutes.
- If the post-run results files (collate or analyze) are larger then 3.7GB, there may be a problem uploading them to the ALM optimized repository.
- Loading a monitor profile which contains monitors on unavailable machines may prevent other monitors from loading, as well as prevent the Monitor Profile Content dialog box from working properly.
- 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.
- A definition of 0 (zero) for an SLA is not a valid value and will cause the SLA report to work incorrectly.
WAN Emulation
- The WAN Emulation Settings dialog box is corrupted if the Google toolbar is installed.
- 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.
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 Vista or Windows 7 requires administrator privileges.
Scheduler
- When you define a real-world schedule by test and by number, and change the number of Vusers, Performance Center may not divide the number of Vusers evenly among the groups.
- When you define a real-world schedule by test and by number, and you decrease the number of running Vusers, the correct number of Vusers will not be reflected in the Group's Total Vusers and # of Vusers.
- If you make changes in the Scheduler, make sure to apply the changes before navigating to the Groups grid.
- If you select Wait for all groups to initialize from the scheduler options, ensure that the Initialize action for the schedule is set to either Initialize all Vusers simultaneously or Initialize XX Vusers every <00:00:00> (HH:MM:SS).
Monitor Profiles
- There is no locking mechanism on monitor profile content. As a result, it is possible for two users to edit the same monitor profile at the same time, possibly overriding each other's changes.
- Oracle Monitors: If you install the Performance Center Server on a 64-bit machine in the default installation directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\....), you cannot define Oracle monitors. If you need to define Oracle monitors, ensure that you install the Performance Center Server in a directory whose path does not include any of the following characters: ( ) : ; * \ / " ~ & ? { } $ % | < > + = ^ [ ]
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).- When configuring the Network Delay Monitor, make sure that the source machine is defined in the same way in both the Lab Management Hosts module and the Edit Monitor dialog box. That is, it should be defined either as an IP address in both places, or as a machine name in both places.
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
System Users
- To run a performance test after changing the system user password, either wait approximately 20 minutes, or reboot all of the hosts.
- The following limitations apply when the Performance Center system user does not have Administrator privileges:
- Hosts that are configured over a firewall cannot be moved to within the firewall.
Workaround: Delete the host and add it again, within the firewall.- For the Task Manager to perform IIS Reset, the configuration user must be saved in the database.
Lab Management
- When using Internet Explorer 7 or 8 on a German operating system, you may encounter an error when opening the Licenses module for the first time after installation.
- After Performance Center installation ends, a new browser opens on the ALM Platform with the ALM Platform URL as the local host machine. The administrator must close this browser and reopen it either with the full ALM Platform URL or on the client machine. If the administrator uses this open browser to add a Performance Center server, he will need to manually update the ALM Platform URL from the Performance Center Server module.
- When exporting the Export Log, the client might freeze.
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.
- Performance Center is unable to display processes and resource usage information for UNIX machines.
- The host purpose can be modified from Lab Management only.
- 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.
General
- Performance Center does not support MS-SQL Windows authentication.
- Using Performance Center APIs or building tools on top of ALM Performance Center schemas and entities is not supported.
- If the JBOSS authentication fails during ALM configuration, you can continue without defining the JBOSS user name and password, but you must add it to the service, otherwise JBOSS will not start, and the HP Application Lifecycle Management service will fail. The JBoss user should have administrative rights on the repository.
To define the JBOSS user name and password:
- Users may not be automatically redirected to the login page after session timeout.
- The clocks on the ALM Platform server, Performance Center server, and database server must always be synchronized. Inconsistency among the server times might cause unexpected failures.
- Service Test scripts must be opened using the old version of Service Test and resaved to ALM before being used in ALM 11.00. Not performing this action may lead to unexpected behavior.
- In a version enabled project, if a script is checked out and then executed by the user who checked it out as an ad hoc run, the script will not execute properly if the script's data contains any subdirectories needed for runtime.
- ALM Performance Center is compatible with SiteScope versions 11 and 11.01, with the following security limitation: AUT Host and topology node passwords are sent to SiteScope in SOAP calls (HTTP) in plain text. It is possible to configure SiteScope to use SSL in order to avoid this security limitation.
- The following message in the Output Window: "Error: Deleted the current transaction" may be caused by the QueryPerformanceFrequency() function not capturing timing information correctly. Since this is a Microsoft API, Microsoft suggests a few ways to resolve the problem. For details, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909944.
- You may receive the following error message on Solaris: "Failed to connect to server: Cannot assign requested address"
Workaround: Run the following commands (require root permission):
ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_time_wait_interval 10000
ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_smallest_anon_port 4096Note: These commands should also be added to one of the startup files so that the change does not get lost after reboot.
- The Load Preview graph displays data beginning from when the Vuser initialization stage is complete.
- 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.
- Server Authentication: When configuring Performance Center to connect through LDAP server authentication, all the LDAP users that need to access Performance Center must be defined under the same Sun One tree or in the same Active Directory domain. Otherwise they are not recognized and Performance Center returns an error when attempting to log on.
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.)
- Recording Window Size and XenApp Plugin for Hosted Applications 11. The recording window size options 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's 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.
- 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.
- Recording a network based application on Windows 7. To record a network-based application (including Web), IPv6 communication must be disabled. Follow the instructions in http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-disable-ipv6-in-windows-7/ to disable IPv6 on Windows 7.
- For protocols using XML, replay fails to create a request when a parameterized input argument contains the ampersand (&) character.
Correlation Studio
Date Execution Prevention
Data Execution Prevention (DEP) may cause VuGen to stop recording. DEP was introduced in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, and is included in Windows Vista.
If you experience unusual behavior during recording in these environments, modify the DEP settings.
To modify the Windows DEP settings:
- Open Start > Control Panel > System.
- In the Advanced tab, click Performance settings.
- In the Performance Options Data Execution Prevention tab, select the first option, DEP for essential services only.
If you cannot change this option, click Add. Browse to the client program, for example IEXPLORE.EXE.
If neither of these options are possible, try to disable DEP completely.
- Click OK to save the settings.
- Reboot the machine.
Load Generators on Windows Vista and Windows 7
- When running a Performance Center Agent on a Load Generator machine, it is recommended that you restart your machine after installing a Performance Center host, before running Vusers.
- When running the Agent service, the Agent Configuration may not restart the agent service if it is already running. To manually restart the Agent service, Choose Start > Administrative Tools > Services. Select the Agent service and choose Stop from the right-click menu. Restart the Agent service.
Protocols
AJAX (Click and Script)
Ajax TruClient
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 LG 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 Agent text trapping does not work on Citrix servers installed on Windows Server 2008.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Java (All)
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
Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
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.
SAPGUI
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.
WAP
Web Services
- In VuGen Tree view, you may experience problems viewing/editing the following types of elements: any_object, CDATA, derived and recursive.
- 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.
- For Axis toolkit, to use base64Binary encoding in scripts created before version 9.10, you must update your WSDL.
- 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.
- The IsNonceIncluded and TimestampFormat properties of web_service_set_security are only supported in Script view-not in Tree view.
- LoadRunner cannot replay scripts containing the soa_xml_validate function.
Note: For more detailed Web Services limitations, refer to the HP Service Test readme.
Analysis
- 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.
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:a. Backup Analysis database on the SQL 2000 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966495.aspx)
b. Uninstall SQL 2000.
c. Install SQL 2005.
d. Restore Analysis data from backup. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177429(SQL.90).aspx)- If you are using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to store Analysis data and you apply a global filter on the Analysis graphs, errors may occur due to a Microsoft limitation. If you receive an error, try and apply the global filter again.
- 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.
Multilingual Support
Internationalization Limitations:
- 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 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 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:
- QuickTest Professional migration: In localized versions, QuickTest Professional 11.00 migration fails.
- 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 Platform server and only one language can be defined per server.
- Vista: 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
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