Rational Automation Framework
Rational Automation Framework is a computer software product in the increasingly important Application release automation category, providing automation for middleware installation, middleware management, middleware operations, and application deployment. The product was initially released in May 2009 as IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere, based on technology developed by Ascendant Technology. With release 3.0 in 2012, IBM generalized the name of the product to IBM Rational Automation Framework to recognize the work done by MidVision to extend the functionality to products other than those from WebSphere. Architecture. The Rational Automation Framework software runs on a "framework server," where  it maintains configuration information that corresponds to product installations on one or more "target systems." Target systems can be physical, virtualized, or in the cloud and can act as source systems, destination systems, or both. The product runs "actions," actually elements within Apache Ant build files, to: The product uses an automation engine to automate any of those tasks. PureApplication System. IBM PureApplication System contains the Rational Automation Framework functionality in the form of a workload named Advanced Middleware Configuration. Advanced Middleware Configuration is typically used in this context for onboarding existing applications to the cloud.