Introduction

We list here all steps needed to install and setup Test Explorer database and web application

Installation Prerequisites

You must comply with the following prerequisites prior to installation:

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 or later / PostgreSQL 12 or later;
JRE 8 or later. LTS versions 8 or 11 are recommended. It is verified with Oracle JDK, OpenJDK and AdoptOpenJDK builds;
Tomcat 8, 8.5 or 9. Tomcat 10 is not supported yet;
The latest ATS Test Explorer release from here;

SQL Server setup

Installation

During installation make sure to choose mixed authentication mode. This is done in order to allow user authenticating through both JDBC and Windows. This can also be done after the install is over by going to SQL Server Management Studio, context menu on Server tree to open Server properties and then go to Security tab.

Setup

Go to SQL Server Management Studio. In Object Explorer view, right click the server and go to "Properties", go to "Connections", check the following:

ANSI warnings
Arithmetic abort
Quoted identifier

Go to SQL Server Configuration Manager. In SQL Server Network Configuration go to Protocols for MSSQLSERVER and enable TCP/IP connections

Create a new user called AtsUser with password AtsPassword. Assign all privileges except denydata*

PostgreSQL server setup

Currently for better performance, we recommend Microsoft SQL Server.

Installation

For Windows, download the latest version from here

For Linux, install it via your distribution package manager:

using aptitute - apt-get install postgresql-<some_version>
using yum - yum install postgresql<some_version>-server
using dnf - dnf install postgresql<some_version>-server

You can also install pgAdmin, which is GUI application for managing PostgreSQL databases and servers, similar to Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

Usage notes

By default PostgreSQL comes with a user called postgres. This is the user that is both used to create ATS Test Explorer databases and optionally to connect to the server via pgAdmin application.

There is also psql and psql.exe that are command-line applications, installed by default with PostgreSQL, that can be used to manipulate, backup and restore databases.

Note that when executing psql or psql.exe, the username of the current user (e.g. those logged into the operating system) will be used, so you have to execute psql -U postgres to connect to the server.

If you add additional users, the command syntax is psql -U <some_user_name> -h localhost.

The user, used by ATS framework, to log test execution data, called AtsUser (password: AtsPassword) is created automatically, when you execute the install script from either

<Test Explorer Zip>/db/postgresql/install_postgresql or <Test Explorer Zip>/db/postgresql/install_postgresql.bat.

This user also can be used to connect to the server, so in this case the command will be: psql -U AtsUser -h localhost.

Performance optimizations

The default PosgreSQL configuration file (<PostgreSQL_InstallDir>/data/postgresql.conf) is made so the db server work well on large variety of systems. But that means you do not get the best performance out of the box.

You can greatly improve it, however, by changing just a couple of lines in the file.

Here are the changes:

shared_buffers = 512MB
#max_wal_size = 3GB

Installing the Test Explorer database

Unzip the Test Explorer zip archive.

Run the <Test Explorer Zip>/db/mssql/install.cmd script. You will be asked for a database name - give the one you want. In a few seconds you have your new database ready to operate.

You can run this step as many times as needed to create the number of databases you want.

The username is expected to be AtsUser and the password - AtsPassword

If this is not your case - edit the <Test Explorer Zip>/db/mssql/generateCreateDBScript.cmd as needed

It is expected to have the SQL Server installed in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server".

If this is not your case -edit the <Test Explorer Zip>/db/mssql/install.cmd as needed

Starting the Test Explorer application

Place the <Test Explorer Zip>/ ats-explorer-x.x.x.war in the web application folder of Tomcat. Test Explorer should work OK with any modern servlet container, but we have tested it on Tomcat only.

Rename the ats-testexplorer-x.x.x.war to some more appropriate name like "TestExplorer" as this will affect your URL.

Start a browser and go to http://<your_server_ip>:8080/TestExplorer

Of course you can make it run on port 80 (edit conf/server.xml), so the URL will become in the form of http://<your_server_ip>/TestExplorer

Running Test Explorer application with database on a remote host

The usual case is to host both database and web application on same host using default username and password. If you want to change it, you need to open the war file and edit its /WEB-INF/classes/ats.config.properties file.

Upgrading the database

Just run <Test Explorer Zip>/db/mssql/upgrade.cmd script and then specify the DB name you want to upgrade.
Note that upgrades are only applied for consecutive versions. I.e. in order to upgrade from version 4.0.3 to 4.0.6 you must first upgrade to version 4.0.4, then 4.0.5 and finally to 4.0.6.