SSL overview

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol creates a standard SSL connection between the client and the server. The client contacts the server and checks to make sure that the server has a valid certificate. This type of connection ensures that all data exchanged between client and server is encrypted, and is therefore not readable by a third party on the Internet.

Extension for Terminal-based Applications supports SSL connections to host sessions using Host On-Demand SSL functions. The SSL connection to a 3270 session is set up by using an open source SSL package called Stunnel.

Stunnel is a program that enables encrypting arbitrary TCP connections inside SSL and is available on both UNIX and Windows operating systems. With Stunnel you can secure non-SSL aware daemons and protocols by providing the encryption that requires no changes to the daemon code.

• Use SSL to connect to host machines
  Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-based Applications requires that you use a security utility such as OpenSSL or IBM Certificate Management to produce the *.p12 file that will pass the host servers self-signed certificate credentials to the terminal to allow a secure connection. Although IBM Certificate Management which runs on Windows , Linux , AIX®, or Solaris distributed platforms is not included with Rational Functional Tester , it is shipped with other IBM products such as IBM Personal Communications, IBM Host On-Demand, and IBM HTTP server. The *.p12 file can easily be created if you have access to this utility.

• Recognition properties
  You can set the recognition property for screens, fields and characters to increase the flexibility of your script when defining a screen. Each object has a set of recognition properties, which are typically established during recording. To find an object in the application-under-test during playback, Functional Tester compares the object in the application with recognition properties in the test object map. Each property of a test object has an associated recognition weight value, which is a number from 0 to 100. Functional Testeruses the weight value for each recognition property to determine the importance of the property.