Table of Contents

Install Guide

for MaxTAF 2.3.0.0

MaxTAF installation involves installing the Maximo add-on and creation of MaxTAF directory. The MaxTAF directory is where all the Test Scripts are saved and compiled.
Keeping MaxTAF directory out of standard Maximo build enables MaxTAF tests to be compiled to Java classes and run on the fly as you develop them.
Also, you install the proper version of Firefox and MaxTAF Recorder extension. Firefox and MaxTAF Recorder need only be installed if you want to record and play UI tests.
Please refer to the MaxTAF User Guide for more information.

You install MaxTAF version 7.x-2.3.0.0 on a Windows administrative workstation where IBM Maximo Asset Management version 7.x is already installed. However, you can create the MaxTAF directory on any location accessible to Maximo server.

To perform the installation of MaxTAF 2.3.0.0, you need the following files:

where 'x' is the version of your Maximo system (e.g. 7.5.0.0 for any of 7.5 versions, or 7.1.1.0 for any of 7.1.1 versions).

  1. Prepare for installation of MaxTAF
  2. Access MaxTAF product software from the supplied ZIP files
  3. Install MaxTAF on the administrative workstation according to the install guidelines below
  4. Perform your post-updatedb procedures
  5. Copy the maxtaf folder to your preferred location (unzip from supplied ZIP file)
  6. Build the EAR files
  7. Redeploy the EAR files
  8. Restart application server
  9. Do post installation checks and tasks
  10. (Optional) Install supported Firefox version
  11. (Optional) Add MaxTAF Recorder extensions to Firefox
  12. (Optional) Start the Selenium Server

The installation of MaxTAF will modify the configuration and the content of your application server, database server, and directory server. These servers are known as the middleware servers.

  1. Back up the middleware servers, the database, and the administrative workstation.
  2. Prepare the application server

Ensure that the middleware server is started, but Maximo server is stopped. Consult Maximo guide on how to stop the Maximo server from within WebSphere.

The installation of MaxTAF product involves copying files from the ZIP package to the Maximo root folder, creating a folder where MaxTAF files will reside and running the installation batch file. Depending on your application server, you will also rebuild and redeploy Maximo EAR and start the Maximo server.

The installation batch file will also start database update, so please make sure that your database does not have any pending changes prior to starting the installation, otherwise the installation will fail and you will have to restore the database.

This guide will refer to the Maximo install home as <MAXIMO_ROOT>, you will need to substitute this with the actual Maximo install home path (for example C:\IBM\SMP\Maximo)

  1. Extract maxtaf-core-7.x-2.3.0.0.zip to <MAXIMO_ROOT> folder.
  2. Extract latest Core patch zip (e.g. maxtaf-core-7.x-2.3.0.2.zip) to <MAXIMO_ROOT> folder.
  3. Create MaxTAF folder - extract maxtaf-mxml-7.x-2.3.0.0.zip to your preferred location which may reside on different machine than the administrative workstation.
  4. Extract latest MXML patch zip (e.g. maxtaf-mxml-7.x-2.3.0.1.zip) to the location that contains MaxTAF folder, created in previous step.
  5. Open command prompt as Administrator
    It is important to run Command Prompt as Administrator, otherwise the install will fail.
  6. From command prompt, go to <MAXIMO_ROOT>\tools\maximo
  7. Execute install by typing "maxtaf_install.bat"
    The maxtaf_install.bat runs Maximo updatedb.bat. After this step, you will need to perform any procedures that you may have associated with the running of updatedb.bat. E.g. you may need to restore custom class names of your objects and attributes.
  8. Enable MaxTAF MIF listeners (optional)
  9. Rebuild and redeploy the EAR file
  10. Restart the Maximo server
  11. Do post installation check and tasks

You can optionally enable MaxTAF MIF Listeners. These will enable the monitoring of data which goes through the JMS queues.

Log in to Maximo as a MAXADMIN group member and click on the Help link in the top right corner, from the dropdown menu click on System Information.

You should see MaxTAF entry in the System Information dialogue.

Also, open the Go To menu. You should see MaxTAF menu group with applications: Test Case, Test Suite and MaxTAF Administration.

In order to complete the installation and start using MaxTAF, you have to enter the license provided by Code Development.

MaxTAF Licence

  1. Log in to Maximo as a MAXADMIN group member
  2. Go to MaxTAF > MaxTAF Administration application
  3. Click "Enter License Key".
    Enter provided info to the following fields:
    • Company Name
    • License Key
    • Accept the license, click on check box Accept Terms and Conditions
      To enable this check box you need to tab-out from License Key field.

    • Click on "Register" button.


MaxTAF MIF Plugin Licence

  1. Log in to Maximo as a MAXADMIN group member
  2. Go to MaxTAF > MaxTAF Administration application
  3. Click "Add Plugin License".
    Enter provided info to the following fields:
    • License Identifier
    • Plugin name
    • Description
    • License class
    Save the record, click on toolbar Save icon.
  4. Display the details for MIF plugin and click "Enter License Key". Enter provided info to the following fields:
    • Company Name
    • License Key
    • Accept the license, click on check box Accept Terms and Conditions
      To enable this check box you need to tab-out from License Key field.

    • Click on "Register" button.


MaxTAF Properties

  1. Log in to Maximo as a MAXADMIN group member
  2. Go to MaxTAF > MaxTAF Administration application
  3. As part of installation process, following properties are added to MaxTAF Properties:
    • directory - MaxTAF Directory
    • lib.001 - Default MaxTAF libs
    • log.directory - MaxTAF Logs Directory
    where, by default, values are set to:
    • <MAXIMO_ROOT>\maxtaf\
    • <MAXIMO_ROOT>\maxtaf\lib\*
    • <MAXIMO_ROOT>\maxtaf\log\
    respectively.
  4. You need to change values for these properties and set them to location where you extracted the maxtaf folder, e.g.
    directory property value: C:\IBM\SMP\Maximo\maxtaf\ changed to c:\maxtaf\
    lib.001 property value: C:\IBM\SMP\Maximo\maxtaf\lib\* changed to c:\maxtaf\lib\*.
    log.directory property value: C:\IBM\SMP\Maximo\maxtaf\log\ changed to c:\maxtaf\log.

In environments where there are multiple MAXIMO Servers (e.g. clustered environment), the MaxTAF Directory should be accessible to all the servers with write permission enabled.

You can now start using MaxTAF. Please consult the User Guide and Developers Guide for further information.

You will need a Firefox browser to record Maximo User Interface tests.

MaxTAF currently supports Firefox up to version 22. If you have a newer version, or if you don't have Firefox installed at all and would like to record UI tests, please install the Firefox version provided here.

Note: Firefox has an option for automated update, which is switched on by default. If you leave this option on, the browser might update itself to a newer version, thus making it incompatible with MaxTAF. Please make sure that the auto-update feature is switched off.

Additionally, Firefox has a separate option for automatic update of Extensions and Add-ons. This option also needs to be switched off. The option is available from the settings menu within the "Add-on Manager" as can be seen on the image below.

After you have installed the proper version of Firefox, you will need to install MaxTAF Recorder firefox extensions.

  1. Open Firefox
  2. Go to Tools > Add-ons
  3. Click the Settings button and select Install Add-on from File


  1. Locate the "maxtaf-recorder-2.3.0.x.xpi".

  1. Click "Install Now"
  2. When prompted, restart Firefox

The MaxTAF Recorder must be properly configured prior to using it.

MaxTAF Recorder is an add-on for FireFox browser that provides many options including the "Record and Play" functionality.

This Guide describes configuration options for MaxTAF Recorder. It is assumed that the MaxTAF Recorder add-on is installed.

  1. Open the MaxTAF Recorder in Firefox
  2. Click "Options" in the menu bar
  3. Click "Options" from the drop-down menu to open MaxTAF Recorder options dialogue
  4. Open the "Locator Builders" tab
  5. Arrange the order of the locator builders by drag and drop according to the image below. The order of the first three locator builders is important (staticId, id, xpath:idRelative)
  6. Open the "Formats" tab
  7. Select the "MaxTAF / Import / Java" format from the list on the left
  8. Change the values of the parameters to the values that you will be using for your UI tests.
    These values will be exported with recorded test scripts, and show up in parameter list of the test case once you import them in MaxTAF's Test Case Application.
  9. Repeat steps 8 for "MaxTAF / Import / MXML" and "MaxTAF / Import / Custom" formats.
  10. Click OK and re-start the Recorder.

Selenium Server is needed to execute UI tests. It will play previously recorded tests. Please consult MaxTAF Developers Guide on how to record and play UI tests.

Selenium Server can be deployed in 2 different ways, depending on how you are using Maximo. Selenium server can run on the Maximo server machine, on user's computer. Different setups are merely a preference and the functionality is not affected by your deployment option. The deployment options are:

Deploy and start Selenium on the Maximo administration workstation

  1. Open command prompt as Administrator (right-click, Run as Administrator)
  2. Go to <MAXTAF_ROOT>\bin folder
  3. Run "java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.33.0.jar"
    (Java must be in your PATH variable. If it is not, then go to your Java install home folder and run from there using the full path to the Selenium Server jar file)

Deploy and start Selenium server on the user computer

  1. Copy selenium-server-standalone-2.33.0.jar from the "bin" folder in your MaxTAF installation package to the user computer
  2. Open command prompt as Administrator (right-click, Run as Administrator)
  3. Go to the folder where the selenium-server-standalone-2.33.0.jar has been copied to
  4. Run "java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.33.0.jar"
    (Java must be in your PATH variable. If it is not, then go to your Java install home folder and run from there using the full path to the Selenium Server jar file)
  5. Make sure that the firewall on the user machine does not block port on which Selenium is establishing the connection (by default that is port 4444)
  6. When creating a UI test in Maximo, you have to change two test case parameters for this setup to work:
    • remoteSelenesServerAddres - set this to the URL of the computer where Selenium server is started (user computer)
    • maximoAddress - set this to the URL of the Maximo server

Once Selenium Server is up and running you can execute MaxTAF UI tests from the MaxTAF application in Maximo. Please consult the MaxTAF User Guide on how to run pre-recorded tests.

 

To execute UI tests on Internet Explorer, Selenium provides a specialised driver. The correct version of this driver is supplied in the "bin" folder of your MaxTAF installation package, named "IEDriverServer.exe". Make sure that this is available on your $PATH (or %PATH% on Windows) of the computer that will be running the Selenium server in order for the IE Driver to work as expected.


It is not unusual to have several MAXIMO installations active especially in large corporate environments e.g. Development, Testing, UAT and Production installations.

This is mainly because you want to control the way you introduce any changes to your MAXIMO production system. Changes are first made on Development system and after assessment are propagated to other systems. This way you can test and accept or refuse changes and also test any installation procedure related to the changes. Specific change may involve MAXIMO class file change(s) and/or database structure change(s). Any change to class file requires MAXIMO EAR file to be built and deployed. Also, usual procedure for Testing and UAT installations is refreshing of database with Production data in order to reduce risk and do your final tests based on real life data.

Your MaxTAF installation may be impacted by above changes to MAXIMO installation.

Change to EAR file may impact MaxTAF if you moving your MAXIMO files from system where MaxTAF was not installed. In this case you need to extract MaxTAF archive (zip) files to <MAXIMO_ROOT> folder as described above. You need to build and deploy EAR file afterwards.

Database refresh may impact MaxTAF in two ways:

In first case you need to follow the above procedure to install MaxTAF.

In this case, before refreshing database you need to export your Test Cases and Test Suites if you have any. After database refresh, you can import your Test Cases and Test Suites back into database. Please refer to MaxTAF User’s Guide regarding import and export procedure. Before you import data back check if you already have existing Test Cases or Test Suites in the system. If there are existing Test Cases or Test Suites you can simply delete it or if you want to keep it please make sure that it will not interfere with the data you want to import.

Also, make sure that you restore your MaxTAF properties after refreshing database.