ACESS A Comprehensive Enterprise Social Services System

Transcription

1 State of Louisiana Department of Social Services ACESS A Comprehensive Enterprise Social Services System Affirmed DSS Platform Environment Deliverable AC30 JULY 12, 2004 VERSION 2.0 State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 1 of 17

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 DOCUMENT CONTROL THE AFFIRMED DSS PLATFORM STATEMENT z/os Environment z/os Software Environment Cúram Benchmarking Activities WebSphere Application Server for z/os Web Services Capabilities WebSphere Performance Management WebSphere Studio Application Monitor Database / Union Everywhere Scrollable cursors Java Support WebSphere MQ z/os Hardware Environment Intel Server Environment Development Environment Networking Environment Existing DSS WAN Network Capacity Planning Activities WebSphere Studio Workload Simulator Capture, Playback, Analyze Capture Playback Analysis SSL, and Socks Support Application Testing Activities Solving the Complexity of Test Management...16 State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 2 of 17

3 1.0 DOCUMENT CONTROL Summary of Changes Version # Version Date Nature of Change Date Submitted 1.0 June 10, 2004 Initial Delivery June 11, July Updated From State Comments July 12, 2004 Document Change Approvers Function State of Louisiana ACESS Project Director IBM ACESS Project Manager Name Don Moore Rick Valentine State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 3 of 17

4 2.0 THE AFFIRMED DSS PLATFORM STATEMENT The affirmation of the platform for the ACESS system is an important step in this project. Selection of the platforms in which to run ACESS was based on several factors, many of which were the knowledge and experience that DSS has in a particular platform suite. An additional factor was the availability of the Cúram software to run in this environment supported by the IBM software products, some of which will be described in this document. Cúram software will run on many different platforms, such as AIX, SUN, Intel and z/os, but the placement for the varying components of the ACESS solution required the most straightforward selection possible for long-term support within DSS. This platform selected was the z/os server environment. DSS presented that this platform be a mandatory requirement in the RFP for the ACESS solution as its preferred platform. IBM has been working with the Cúram Software Company to support their activities in porting this application to the z/os environment in anticipation of this DSS requirement. IBM has provided hardware, software, and support to get Cúram to the point it is today. This is an ongoing process for support of any vendor who wishes to use a particular platform for their software products. As technology continues to increase exponentially in processing speed and new ways to deliver solutions, the long-term relationship between software and hardware vendors is important. Other factors that work in to the platform choice is the supporting software products that run on that same platform and are required to deliver the overall solution to DSS. These supporting software products will run in several different environments. For example, the HTTP and Edge Server devices will use an Intel platform. The development environment will also use an Intel based platform in which to develop and unit test the software, and then to deploy to the z/os environment for integration and system testing. The following graphic shows a high level architectural depiction of the ACESS solution for the z/os platform. IBM affirms that the z/os platform and its components will support the full workload associated with the ACESS system three increments, but there will be some potential modifications to the hardware and or software environment. Through the activities of the capacity and performance project tasks, these modifications will be determined. This is especially the case since this is the first z/os Cúram implementation and, as such, there is no available system to use as a baseline comparison at this time. There will be an official benchmark from Cúram that will provide some of the data needed to help verify this affirmation statement. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 4 of 17

5 Figure 1 - ACESS High Level Architecture View 2.1 z/os Environment This section describes some of the reasoning behind why the z/os platform was selected to support the ACESS application. DSS requires an IT environment that is responsive, process-focused, resilient, and efficient. With a growing need to become more on demand oriented, more organizations are rediscovering the relevance of mainframe values. The zseries operating environment strategy centers on automation, integration and virtualization. These are IT capabilities born and most fully realized in mainframe computing. The zseries expands upon these important mainframe values and articulates our mainframe strategy of Reliability, Availability and Service. This has been a long-term strategic vision of mainframe computing, starting with the S360 and continuing to the zseries machines. The zseries delivers High Performance Transaction Processing, I/O intensive workload processing, capable of being Large Database server, as well as High Resiliency and Security. Another key feature of the zseries is the capability to have dedicated engines to serve as coupling facilities in a sysplex and also have a special application engine to process Java instructions without taking State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 5 of 17

6 away from the machine central processors. With these enhancements, the mainframes continue to be viable solutions for a number of different environments. This type of support will only be accomplished by deploying a robust application foundation that is capable of: Managing complex transactions with high performance and throughput. Easily adapting to growing workloads without impacting system responsiveness and enduser service. Promoting secure access to heterogeneous enterprise computing resources. Industry leaders worldwide look to the open, standards-based Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology as the preferred architecture on which to build this solid foundation. IBM WebSphere software provides an industry-leading, robust implementation that supports this architecture. An open, standards-based J2EE environment also enables optimal use of existing IT assets so that both new and existing business processes will be integrated with seamless, highly automated solutions. IBM has helped pioneer Java connectivity to enterprise information systems and has played an instrumental role in developing the relative J2EE standards 2.2 z/os Software Environment This section will describe some of the key software components of the ACESS solution and some of their features on the z/os platform. This is not intended as a comprehensive description of these products and functionality, but to describe some of the benefits of the use of the z/os platform in conjunction with this software Cúram Benchmarking Activities The benchmarking of an application on a new platform is a normal process for most vendors. This initial benchmark is required so that a prospective customer looking at a system using a particular platform will know at least what the minimal requirements are. There has been discussion over scheduling the benchmarking activities for the Cúram software release V3.0 for the z/os. IBM is prepared for Cúram to run the performance tests for the z/os and have notified Cúram to this effect. The remaining part of this is for Cúram to schedule this activity with IBM. Once this is scheduled, the date and the results will be communicated to the ACESS Project Director. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 6 of 17

7 2.2.2 WebSphere Application Server for z/os IBM WebSphere Application Server for z/os provides the environment required to handle highvolume, Web-based transaction processing. A comprehensive J2EE technology and Web services-based application server, WebSphere Application Server for z/os is specifically designed to leverage the unique qualities of service provided by zseries hardware and the IBM z/os operating system. Through an e-business application deployment environment, WebSphere can build and manage e-business applications, integrate existing resources and extend host systems to the Web. WebSphere Application Server for z/os combines the integrated, open, standards-based J2EE environment of IBM WebSphere Application Server with the reliability and availability of the z/os operating system. As a result of this advanced design, WebSphere Application Server for z/os provides an efficient environment to help maximize staff and system resources by optimizing existing capacities. WebSphere Application Server for z/os leverages the robust capabilities that the ACESS Project demands, including: zseries hardware cryptographic engines and z/os support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) transactions to provide high-performance security processing. Intelligent resource director (IRD) to shift capacity and resources from lower to higherpriority partitions. Capacity upgrade on demand to support non-disruptive capacity increases. Capacity backup to support rapid, temporary, non-disruptive capacity additions. Extended systems management facility recording. Two-phase commit with resource recovery service (RRS), the native z/os transaction manager to facilitate deep integration with DB2 Universal Database systems to provide optimal performance, higher availability and faster recovery in rollback situations Web Services Capabilities Web services can help the project to reliably and smoothly integrate new Web applications with existing Web and traditional applications if needed. WebSphere Application Server for z/os provides a comprehensive infrastructure to support the production-ready deployment of Web services-based applications, allowing the ability to build, publish and manage integration-ready application services that can be used by other internal or external organizations or platforms. WebSphere Application Server supports key Web services open standards, including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI); and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). WebSphere Application Server also supports deployment of web services with a variety of communication mechanisms, including SOAP and HTTP, Java Message Service (JMS) or Remote Method Invocation/Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (RMI/IIOP). WebSphere Application Server for z/os provides extended Web services support with a private UDDI registry. The IBM UDDI registry, which acts as a directory of services to State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 7 of 17

8 help users find information about Web services, enables developers to publish and test their internal e-business applications in a security-rich, private environment WebSphere Performance Management As the growth of J2EE applications shows no signs of slowing down, J2EE application management has become a business-critical need. By providing granular application structure and behavior information, IBM WebSphere Studio Application Monitor complements systems or infrastructure-monitoring products from Tivoli or other monitoring tools. WebSphere Studio Application Monitor is intended to be used by application developers and application support analysts, while data center operators use infrastructure monitoring tools. The goal of application management is to minimize the risks associated with deploying applications into a production environment. Application management consists of two components: Application problem determination, which addresses the problems that are most likely to occur in the applications and what can be done proactively to avoid them; or if a problem exists, addresses how it can be corrected quickly and with minimal disruption. Application performance management, which addresses how many resources the applications will consume and how to analyze historical data to fine tune the applications and assess the needs for future growth WebSphere Studio Application Monitor WebSphere Studio Application Monitor helps find and correct application problems, and provides the ability to assess and analyze J2EE application performance. WebSphere Studio Application Monitor enables customers to perform deep drill-down analysis against J2EE applications, and provides application and business context surrounding the data that it collects. J2EE application servers will act like a black box when it is required to understand the behavior and flow of applications at any given time. WebSphere Studio Application Monitor will fill that gap through its application-centric problem determination and performance analysis capabilities in a non-intrusive, low-overhead manner. WebSphere Studio Application Monitor complements other systems management products by providing the missing application detail necessary for a complete, end-to-end solution Database / 2 This section provides a description of some of the DB2 benefits and features that are available on the z/os system in support of the ACESS Project. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 8 of 17

9 With DB2 V7, DB2 delivers more scalability and availability for e-business applications. Using the powerful environment provided by the new zseries and z/os, it will leverage existing applications while developing and expanding potential e-business solutions for the future. DB2 V7 delivers several enhancements for the usability, scalability, and availability of the e- business applications. Greater flexibility and family compatibility comes from several SQL enhancements listed below: Union Everywhere This enhancement satisfies an old important requirement. It provides the ability to define a view based upon the UNION of subselects: users can reference the view as if it were a single table while keeping the amount of data manageable at the table level Scrollable cursors Scrollable cursors give the application logic ease of movement through the result table using simple SQL and program logic. This frees the application from the need to cache the resultant data or to reinvoke the query in order to reposition within the resultant data. Support for scrollable cursors enables applications to use a powerful new set of SQL to fetch data using a cursor at random and in forward and backward direction. The syntax will replace cumbersome logic and coding techniques and also improve performance. Scrollable cursors are especially useful for screen-based applications. It can specify that the data in the result table remain static or do the data updates dynamically. It will specify that the data in the result table remain insensitive or sensitive to concurrent changes in the database. It will also update the database if chosen to be sensitive to changes Java Support DB2 V7 implements support for the JDBC 2.0 standard and, in addition, support for userid/password usage on SQL CONNECT via URL and the JDBC Driver execution. DB2 V7 also allows implementation of Java stored procedures as both compiled Java using the z/os High Performance Java Compiler (HPJ) and interpreted Java executing in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), as well as support for user-defined external (non SQL) functions written in Java WebSphere MQ WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker for z/os helps to efficiently and effectively manage information within the enterprise and beyond, wherever it is, however it is stored. Whether dealing with enterprise resource planning, straight-through processing or any other business application, it can construct information flows according to specific business needs by orchestrating the flow of information based on policies or business rules. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 9 of 17

10 Data is transformed and routed in the format required by the recipients. Because WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker allows consolidated information from disparate applications without modifying it, the solution can design, use and manipulate business rules as the business needs dictate, without having to learn a host of new skills. The open framework of WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker gives more flexibility and control of the business data and handles all types of industry-standard message formats. It will dynamically manipulate and route messages, for example, to augment in-flight data with information from corporate databases. WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker can implement real time, application-to-application message transformation and intelligent message routing quickly and easily. 2.3 z/os Hardware Environment This section provides some high-level z/os hardware capabilities. Over the course of the project there is the potential that the z/os software and zserver may need to go through several upgrades to support the growing ACESS application. The z/os platform used for the ACESS solution will support those expanded processing resources as the project progresses. Continual advances in zseries hardware along with its TCP/IP networking capabilities reinforce the mainframe's integral role in the operating environment, including recent additions for grid computing support and infrastructure simplification. The zseries features an enhanced I/O subsystem and high performance adapter features balanced with its scalable number of processors, main memory, availability and virtualization technologies, plus advanced networking capabilities on the z/os. With an expanding family of high performance Open System Architecture (OSA), express networking features at up to Gigabit speeds to connect the outside world, leading edge HiperSockets for advanced virtual server-to-virtual server networking at memory speed bandwidth and close to zero latency, the zseries can help provide the connections needed within the mainframe, between zseries and other servers. There are three mainframe components that will enhance the performance of the z/os system to meet the needs of the ACESS system. The first is the installation of additional CPU s to the hardware. Adding additional processors and making those processors available to the LPAR where ACESS is running will help to provide any needed throughput in this area if required. The second is the addition of memory, which can be a particular benefit to applications that are heavily memory resident. The benefit of additional memory is most apparent in the memory paging subsystems for the z/os system. The result of not having to request a memory storage page from a DASD device enhances the performance of any system making the memory request. There is a balance between having enough memory where nothing has to be paged out to the subsystem and having this activity occur at a reasonable level that does not impact overall performance. The last area is the disk space allocated to the LPAR that is running ACESS. Having the required disk space capacity configured to the z/os so that the input/output (I/O) throughput is not causing any bottlenecks in this area is important as well. Some combination of the above three items will be what IBM recommends as changes to the z/os environment in order to support the ACESS system. These recommendations will be State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 10 of 17

11 driven from other project activities in the capacity planning activities. It is important that those capacity planning activities take place early enough to provide the State lead time to acquire and install any additional components for the z/os prior to going live with any of the increments for ACESS. 2.4 Intel Server Environment This section provides some information about the Intel servers to be used in support of the ACESS system. The Intel servers are a critical component in the overall architecture of the ACESS system, particularly in the development environment and in the capacity of the front-end control to the z/os server in the area of HTTP servers and Edge servers Development Environment The development server environment resides on a combination of Intel platform servers. This is a required configuration of the Cúram software to support the development, build, and deploy functions. The use of this environment provides the flexibility for being able to deploy from the Intel servers to the target platform for the end application. In the case of this project, the target deployment environment is the z/os system. Intel development servers are also supporting the Rational Software suite for use in support for the Cúram solution. Cúram integrates with Rational at certain levels and this requires the use of these tools in this particular environment for integration purposes. Intel servers were proposed as the front-end HTTP and Edgeservers Web services devices to front the z/os system to support ACESS solution. Please refer to Figure 2 - ACESS High Level Architecture View for how some of these servers were proposed as a part of the solution. The drawing below is how the Intel server environment is configured. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 11 of 17

12 Figure 3 - Intel Server Environment Application Services Rational ClearQuest + ReqPro DB services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 OS: 2000 server Rational Enterprise Suite 2003 DB: MS SQL Server 2000 Performance Rqmts / Load : Moderate / Moderate Rational License server - Performance Rqmt / Load: Low / Low Shared Filesystems Services + App Distribution Services - OS: Any DB: none Other s /w: enable public /protected shared drive space Requires connectivity to separately -specified SAN Rational ClearCase services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 OS: 2000 server Rational Enterprise Suite 2003 DB: none Performance Rqmts / Load : High / High Tivoli Security services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 2 (redundant ) servers will be transitioned from dev to production OS: 2003 Server DB: none Other s /w: Tivoli Identity Manager (TIM) & Tivoli Access Manager (TAM) Performance Rqmts / Load : dev: Low / Low Performance Rqmts / Load : prod: High / Moderate WebSphere Edge services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 2 (for load balancing and availability ) OS: 2003 Server DB: none Other s /w: http services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 2 (load balancing and availability ) OS: 2003 Server DB: none Other s /w: IBM http Server (Web Server) X-Series Servers CPU: 2 x 3.2GHz Mem : 2gb HD: 73gb CPU: 4 x 2.8GHz Mem : 4gb HD: 36gb CPU: 2 x 3.2GHz Mem : 2gb HD: 73gb CPU: 2 x 3.2GHz Mem : 2gb HD: 73gb CPU: 2 x 3.2GHz Mem : 2gb HD: 73gb Priority 1 *L 1 *L *SL Build & Deploy services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 2 (primary + alternate) OS: 2003 Server Rational Enterprise Suite 2003 DB: none Other s /w: WSAD (+ WAS potential ) Project Office services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 OS: 2003 Server DB: MS SQL Server 2000 Other s /w: MS Project Server 2003, IE5.5, (IIS to support browser interface or separate IIS Services separate ) Note: separate IBM -owned server under state data center mgmt QA/Testing services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 OS: DB: Sybase SQL Anywhere (included) Other s /w: Rational Test Manager, Rational Robot Performance Rqmt / Load: Medium / High IIS Web Services - SysMgmt: Tier 1 OS: 2003 DB: none Other s /w: IIS Services for ReqPro, ClearQuest, MS Project Services CPU: 4 x 2.8GHz Mem : 4gb HD: 36gb Includes 2-TB SAN CPU: 2 x 2.2 GHz Mem : 1GB HD: IBM Provided CPU: 4 x 2.8GHz Mem : 4gb HD: 36gb CPU: 2 x 3.2GHz Mem : 2gb HD: 73gb 1 *W *L = Loaner Machine from state inventory until new equipment is available *SL = Shared state services or loaner machine from state inventory until new equipment is available *W = Workstation until new equipment is available Issues: Rational Enterprise Suite 2003 requires Apache instead of. IIS for web services gdh State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 12 of 17

13 2.5 Networking Environment This section provides some information about the support of TCP/IP for the z/os platform as well as information regarding the existing State WAN/LAN environment to support ACESS. This is important to the ACESS project because of the internet-based solution that ACESS will operate within the existing State network. The TCP/IP system address space is where the TCP/IP protocol stack is implemented in TCP/IP for MVS. The TCP/IP system address space is also often referred to as the stack (short for the TCP/IP protocol stack) or the engine (a nickname for the code that implements the TCP/IP protocol stack functions). The existing DSS network now supports mostly SNA 3270 type traffic that is comprised of Natural CICS legacy applications currently in production. This type of traffic across the network will be joined by the TCP/IP packets that will make up the data being transmitted back and forth across the network in support of ACESS. Some percentage of the existing 3270 traffic will be replaced with the TCP/IP traffic over the course of the three ACESS increments. However, in general TCP/IP protocols place a somewhat larger amount of traffic across the underlying WAN/LAN network to support the type of application data requirements for ACESS. Part of the capacity activities performed in the ACESS project will be to gather information regarding the current utilization of the existing network and then to include the new ACESS workload into the overall network architecture to help to determine what potential changes will be needed to support this new workload, if any. The underlying network infrastructure is a key component in the overall response time equation. In any particular transaction operating across any network, the majority of the time will be spent in the transmission and receipt of that data, where in the overall transaction, actual CPU resource bound activities are significantly smaller. Understanding the network performance aspect for this project is of particular importance because there are Service Level Agreements required to support overall response time for the ACESS application. It is certainly possible to build a network with overall sub-second response time, but at an expense that would make it both prohibitive and unreasonable from a cost standpoint. The challenge here is to balance the response time requirements so that a normalized and consistently stable transaction response time can be achieved. One of the possible performance improvement scenarios is that additional T1 lines may be required to certain locations that have not been able to upgrade their specific location infrastructure (as referenced in the ACESS RFP, Appendix H). For example, if some older office buildings are still equipped with 16 MB/sec Token Ring networks, this will most certainly be a response time issue for those ACESS users. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 13 of 17

14 2.5.1 Existing DSS WAN Network The core of the DSS WAN is a Frame Relay network operated by Bell South. DSS has five main hub sites, referred to as Points of Presence (POP), located in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Monroe, Lafayette, and Shreveport. These sites are connected by high-speed T3 lines, and serve as regional pipes to which all field offices connect. Two point-to-point T1 lines connect the Baton Rouge POP to each of the regional POPs to provide redundancy in case of failure of the Frame Relay network. These lines are also used for video conferencing. The following diagram shows an overview of the DSS WAN environment. Figure 4 - Existing DSS WAN Environment 2.6 Capacity Planning Activities This section describes the approach that is planned for the capacity planning and performance tests to support the ACESS system. For capacity and performance activities, it is planned to use the WebSphere suite of testing tools that come standard with this software. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 14 of 17

15 2.6.1 WebSphere Studio Workload Simulator WebSphere Studio Workload Simulator leverages the highly scalable z/os environment to conduct load, stress, performance, regression and capacity-planning tests. It creates virtual or simulated users, helping to reduce the costs associated with manual load and performance testing, verifying application performance and scalability before production or live business processing. WebSphere Studio Workload Simulator: Simulates multiple Internet browsers to test Web servers. Helps validate a Web-serving environment against production-level loads. Is integrated with WebSphere Studio Application Monitor. Enables simplified setup and testing from a single-server environment. WebSphere Workload Simulator consists of two components: a "controller" and an "engine." For high scalability, WebSphere Workload Simulator's "engine" component, which generates the load used during load testing, is installed on a zseries server. The load generated by the engine can be used to test any Web-serving environment (e.g., the environment to be tested is not limited to z/os). WebSphere Workload Simulator supports multiple engines. The user interfaces with WebSphere Workload Simulator through the "controller." This component resides on a Windows workstation and offers a Windows graphical user interface (GUI) for managing all aspects of the load-testing process. Test scripts can be created and edited, simulation runs can be set up, executed and monitored, and test results can be analyzed without leaving the Windows GUI Capture, Playback, Analyze With WebSphere Workload Simulator, the load-testing process will be summarized in three simple steps. First, the user's actions during a Web session are "captured" to produce a test script. Second, the script is played back through the environment to be tested. Third, analysis is performed on the test results Capture Test scripts are automatically generated by a "capture" function as the user navigates through a Web session. The Capture function, launched with a simple click of the mouse, captures the session's Web traffic and turns it into a test script ready for immediate playback. If needed, more complex programming functions (e.g., weight distribution, looping) can also be added to the test script to mimic the actions of a group of real users. Sections of a test script can be defined as "transactions" for further monitoring and analysis. In order to make realistic simulations, a load-testing tool must imitate the multiple possibilities that occur in real life, and allow for variable content. For instance, not all users of a Web site will have the same logon IDs or passwords, nor would they choose to perform the same tasks. WebSphere Workload Simulator allows variable content to be incorporated into the test scripts. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 15 of 17

16 Playback For maximum flexibility during execution, several run-time parameters can be set: the number of "virtual users" to be simulated, whether the test should be repeated for a specific number of times, should run until manually stopped, or should run for a specific time period. To simulate real-life conditions, various delay times can be specified: delays between the virtual users as they go online (not all users logon at exactly the same instant), delays between Web pages, and between the elements of a Web page Analysis After the test script has been defined and the simulation launched, the test can be monitored in real-time during execution. This is done through the controller's Windows GUI, or optionally, through a Web browser. This remote monitoring capability is especially helpful for very extended runs (e.g., over a weekend), as it obviates the need for test personnel to be present at the test site. WebSphere Workload Simulator can graph various performance characteristics against the number of simulated users or against time. Response time, data throughput, throughput of page elements, and CPU or memory utilization are available for plotting. For in-depth analysis of test results, different levels of logging of the test activity are possible, and the HTTP activity of each simulated client can be traced SSL, and Socks Support WebSphere Workload Simulator provides SSL support, and handles capture and playback through a Socks firewall. 2.7 Application Testing Activities This section describes the use of the Rational testing tool suite in support of automated application testing and regression testing techniques. Rational TestManager is the central console for test activity management, execution, and reporting. Built for extensibility, it supports everything from pure manual test approaches to various automated paradigms, including unit testing, functional regression testing, and performance testing. Rational TestManager is intended to be accessed by all members of a project team, ensuring the high visibility of test coverage information, defect trends, and application readiness Solving the Complexity of Test Management Rational TestManager puts the test team in control of the testing effort, focusing their effort by automating and simplifying crucial tasks. The tool allows teams to start from, keep track of, and test all the required functionality of an application, helping to ensure no critical business requirements go untested. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 16 of 17

17 Support for all test types: Plan, manage and execute functional, performance, manual, integration, regression, configuration and component testing from the same interface. Gives test leads, project managers and business analysts a comprehensive view into all of the test activities and test results for the application. Customizable test management: Open APIs in Rational TestManager let users build support for new test inputs (e.g. system requirements from a third-party tool) and test types (e.g. home-grown unit tests). Support for local and remote test execution: Run tests on the local machine or on remote machines in the test lab. Parallel test execution is limited only by the number of system resources that are available. Establish and manage traceability: Requirements are linked to test cases, ensuring proper test coverage. In addition, suspicion analysis ensures that when requirements change, test cases traced to the requirement are automatically flagged as possible candidates for modification. Detailed test evaluation: An integrated log viewer constructs a log for each test run, including test status, environmental information and additional informational tags such as runtime analysis information. Generate meaningful reports: Rational TestManager includes a series of predefined graphical and textual reports capturing the crucial aspects of application quality and test completeness. Special reports exist for performance test analysis, including correlation reports combining response times with resource utilization metrics from remote machines. State of Louisiana - ACESS Page 17 of 17