SCRIPTING WITH RTE PROTOCOL USING LOADRUNNER

Introduction:
RTE protocol is used to record mainframe applications.
RTE Vuser does the following activities:
Types character input into terminal emulator, submits the data to a server, and then waits for the server to respond.

Purpose:

• We record a terminal emulator session with VuGen to represent a true user's actions. You can then enhance your recorded script with transaction and synchronization functions.
• RTE Vusers operate terminal emulators in order to load test client/server systems.
• The RTE protocol works like when you are sending data to server it would send one character by character to DB.

Script Recording:
Vugen can be used to record windows based Vuser scripts. VuGen uses the PowerTerm terminal emulator to emulate a wide variety of terminal types.

This task includes the following:

How to Connect to the Application Manually:

1. Click on the 3270 session icon on desktop.
2. Choose Default 3270 and Click on the Connect Button.
3. Enter Application id: ims0 as shown in the screen shot and press CTRL key. In mainframe applications CTRL key is pressed instead of ENTER. The CTRL key works same as like ENTER key in mainframe applications.
4. Perform other steps of scenarios.

Actual Script Recording in RTE Protocol:

1. Open the Vugen > Click on the New Script And Solution > Select RTE(Remote Terminal Emulator).
2. After Clicking on the create button, Click on the Record button to start recording of the script.
3. Now the actual recording starts here, Click on the Communication menu and in that Connect option.
4. Enter Hostname, Terminal Type, Terminal ID and Click on Connect button to connect to the application.
5. Once Connect button is clicked, the next steps are same as connecting manually to application.

Parameterization and Correlation in RTE Scripts:

The Parameterization in RTE is same as in HTTP/HTML protocol and the simple way of correlation in RTE scripts is to use TE_wait_text function. This function waits for a string to appear in a designated location.

TE_wait_text( const char *pattern, int timeout , int col1, int row1, int col2, int row2);

TE_wait_text function has five parameters.

1^st parameter: The text you have to search on the screen.

2^nd Parameter: The Timeout value in seconds to search the specified text on the screen

3^rd   and   4^th Parameter: The column and row coordinates of the top left corner of the area at which to wait for the string

5^th and 6^th Parameter: The column and row coordinates of the lower right corner of the area at which to wait for the string.

Example: TE_wait_text ("D010V00", 30, 74, 1, 80, 1);

TE_wait_cursor (int col, int row, int stable, int timeout);

1^st parameter: The desired column of the cursor.

2^nd parameter: The desired row of the cursor.

3^rd parameter: The time (in milliseconds) that the cursor must remain at the specified location.

4^th parameter:  The time to wait for the cursor to stabilize

Example: TE_wait_cursor(1, 11, 100, 90);

Sample Script:

Scripting Challenges in RTE:

The following were the challenges noted during RTE recording:

1. Details of Terminal and Host. 
2. As RTE protocol scripts record only key strokes, as a result it demands good scripting skills and knowledge of correlation and error handling in scripts.
3. Knowledge of how to correlate and parameterize in RTE scripts.