We’re pleased to announce that DPBuddy 3.2.2 is now available. The main feature of this release is the ability to create domains with a single command, including automatic deletion of a domain:

dpbuddy createDomain -domain domain_name -delete -maxCheckpoints 5

Other new features include:

• Full support for the latest versions of DataPower firmware, including 7.1.0.4
• copy now supports “excludes” attribute; “includes” defaults to “include all” similar to the standard Ant copy command.
• All transformations now support “verbose” attribute so you can see the list of changes performed by transformations without having to run DPBuddy/Ant in “verbose” mode.
• Support for DataPower deployment variables in the import command.
• Cleanup of the logic used by environment-specific property resolution mechanism.
• “overwriteFiles” attribute of the import command now defaults to “false” for XML import files.

The release also contains several important bug fixes.

You can download DPBuddy 3.2.2 trial from this page.

We're pleased to announce that DPBuddy 3.2 is now available. The main feature of this release is the ability to execute any DPBuddy task or command against multiple devices and/or domains. Simply define the URLs of your devices using environment properties and supply a list of environment prefixes to a command or an Ant task:

dpbuddy import -file services.zip -env "dev,test"

DPBuddy will execute the command against all the devices in the list, and, in case of any errors, it would optionally rollback either just the failed domains or all the devices/domains in the list.

You can find more details in the DPBuddy documentation.

Other new features include:

• Full support for the latest versions of DataPower firmware, including versions 7.0.0.5 and 7.1.0.3
• Support for remotely executing DataPower CLI commands and configuration scripts. DPBuddy can upload the script to the device and execute it there. The scripts can contain Ant/Groovy variables.
• “Copy”, “action” and several other commands now support auto-rollback in case of an error.
• New execTarget task allowing for automatic execution of any set of Ant targets against multiple devices/domains. Similar to other DPBuddy tasks, “execTask” supports auto-rollback.
• tailLog command used for remotely tailing DataPower logs now displays domain, log category and object type.
• Deployment policy used by “import” and other commands can now be direct output of “export”. Previously, the exported file had to be manually cleaned up prior to using it as part of “import”.
• Support for a global "ignore list" of object classes and names. This list is used by state check commands to exclude those objects from the check that are supposed to be in the "down" state.
• Better error handling in the “copy” command.
• Support for TLS 1.2.
• DPBuddy CLI can now be run under Cygwin.
• New ping command.
• Enhanced troubleshooting of HTTP connections between DataPower and DPBuddy.

The release also contains several important bug fixes.

You can download DPBuddy 3.2 trial from this page.

Updated Online Documentation

We’ve converted our documentation to the online HTML format, which is much easier to navigate than the old PDF file. Future releases of DPBuddy will be bundled with this documentation instead of PDF.

Support for DataPower Firmware Version 7

We ran our full test suite against the recently released DataPower Version 7 and did not see any issues. If you’re planning to migrate to version 7 in the future, all your DPBuddy scripts and commands should continue working.

Support for GatewayScript

Support for JavaScript (a.k.a. GatewayScript) is the most noticeable new feature in DataPower firmware Version 7. GatewayScript can be used as part of any processing policy as an alternative to the XSLT-based rules.

Please see this page for the tips on developing and deploying GatewayScript files.

You can easily automate your DataPower deployments with Jenkins and DPBuddy. DPBuddy comes with a comprehensive set of Ant tasks, so you can simply create an Ant script defining your build/deployment process and then invoke the script from Jenkins using the “Invoke Ant” build step.
You can find the details in this tutorial.

Any automated build/deployment process should be accompanied by automated testing. This is required for automated (let alone for continuous) delivery of any application. Services residing in DataPower appliances should also be covered by automated testing. This can be achieved by invoking SoapUI test cases as part of an automated deployment, after all the services have been imported. This article explains how to do it.

We're pleased to announce that DPBuddy 3.1 is now available. The main feature of this release is the DPBuddy command-line interface (CLI). All of DPBuddy's Ant tasks can now be executed as shell commands without having to create or run Ant build files.

For example, to import a file, you can run the following command:

dpbuddy import -file services.zip -assertObjectsUp -save

All attributes of DPBuddy's Ant tasks are translated into command line options, so that DPBuddy commands have the same capabilities as Ant tasks.

Another important feature is the substantially expanded "import" command/task. It provides the following new capabilities:

• Automatic rollback to a checkpoint in case of an import failure.
• Creating the checkpoint before the import.
• Quiescing the domain before the import and unquiescing it after the import.
• Checking that the ports used by the imported services are open after the import.
• Resetting the domain's configuration before the import to clean the domain.
• Setting the domain's comments, which could be used for version tracking.
• Resolving template variables without having to provide an empty "transform" element.

Other new features in this release include the following:.

• A simplified way of specifying DataPower objects in export, assertState, quiesce and other tasks/commands. You can now provide regular expressions defining object types and names via attributes instead of having to define a nested element in Ant, e.g., <dp:export file="${export.zip.file}" classPattern="(WSGatew.*|.*Firewall.*)"/>
• Copy command/task now supports the "incudes" attribute/option so you don't have to specify the nested fileset.
• Copy/command task now supports the "flushCache" attribute/option to automatically clear the XML cache after copying.
• You can specify the environment prefix using the "env" attribute/option instead of having to use the "environment" task.
• Export now gets rid of unused namespace declarations, so the resulting XML file is cleaner.
• The ability to delete all objects related to a particuar service. DataPower does not do it by default, but using DPBuddy you can now clear all artifacts related to a particular service.
• "assertOpenPorts" task/command to verify that specific ports are actually open on the device.
• "testConnection" task.

Download DPBuddy 3.1

New and Updated Guides and Tutorials

• How to Track Versions of DataPower Services. You can easily achieve end-to-end traceability of all deployed services and domains with DPBuddy.

If you’d like to try implementing version traceability, download the trial version of DPBuddy if you haven’t done so already.

Upcoming DPBuddy Release

We’re on track to release DPBuddy 3.0.1 later this month, April, 2014. Some of the newly added features include:

• Ability to delete all objects related to a particular service. DataPower does not do it by default, but using DPBuddy you will be able to remove all artifacts related to a given service or multiple services.
• Ability to update the domain’s “comments” field as part of “import” — this will simplify version tracking of deployed domains.
• Ability to check that specific ports are actually open on the device after import. Simply provide “assertPorts” attribute/option to the “import” command and DPBuddy will make sure that the ports are active.

Other new features coming in 3.0.1 include:

• Command line support.You’ll be able to run any DPBuddy task directly from the command line without have to go through Ant. For example, to import a file, you’ll be able to simply run this command directly from shell/DOS prompt:

  dpbuddy import -file services.zip -assertObjectsUp -save 
  

  
  Read the rest of this post »

A version traceability mechanism should allow us to see versions of all our application components. An applications with UI front-end could have a “help/about” page or use other ways to show its version to an end user or to a developer. On the back-end, the version might be embedded into a manifest file or an application-specific property/configuration file. The version is typically associated with a code baseline stored in a version control repository.

This article explains how to track version of DataPower objects and services.

Secure backup is the only way to backup the entire DataPower device, including keys and certificates. Therefore, it is desirable to run it on a regular basis.

You can easily automate secure backup using DPBuddy. This post explains how.

SoapUI is the de facto standard tool for testing Web services and APIs. It is used by many DataPower developers. However, when SoapUI is used to test DataPower services that rely on XSLT files or other artifacts that have to be authored locally, having to manually upload these files to the device could substantially impair a developer’s productivity.

File uploads and many other test preparation steps can be easily automated using DPBuddy. All that is required is to invoke an Ant target containing DPBuddy’s copy task from the setup script of a SoapUI test step or a test suite. This guide explains how to do it.

It is desirable to keep the configuration of DataPower objects and services under version control. The are many advantages to this approach: being able to re-install a release of an application (of which DataPower configuration could be a component), reverting to an older version of the configuration, being able to diff versions (including diffing across environments) and so on. DataPower itself has built-in support for checkpoints and configuration diffing, but it’s no match for what can be done with a version control tool, especially the one that has a light-weight branching model such as Git.

You can find more details about version-controlling DataPower configuration here.

DPBuddy 3.0 has been released and is currently available for download.
DPBuddy 3.0 comes with a long list of new features and a number of bug fixes and performance improvements. Please see DPBuddy Feature List for more details.