Category Archives: DataPower

DataPower Virtual Machines are Coming

Posted on: October 21, 2012 | Posted in: DataPower

IBM recently published a statement of directions to release “virtual editions” of IBM WebSphere DataPower XG45 and XI52. These are probably two the most popular DataPower models.
DataPower functionality (“firmware”) will be implemented as a VMWare VM.

This will greatly simplify use of DataPower for development. For example, development and test instances can be implemented as VMs, whereas production could remain hardware appliance-based.

Hopefully, this will also lead to increased popularity of DataPower platform as it makes it easier for potential customers to try it out (will we see a trial version of DataPower?).

Using Auto-complete in Eclipse Ant Editor for DPBuddy Tasks

Posted on: September 22, 2012 | Posted in: Ant, DataPower, DPBuddy

Many developers utilize Eclipse for editing Ant files. Ant editor in Eclipse is fairly powerful, this article provides a good overview of its capabilities.

One of the most useful features is auto-complete for Ant tasks. Just press Ctrl-space and you’ll see all attributes and nested elements supported by the task.

Auto-complete comes very handy when working with DPBuddy Ant tasks (and for developing WebSphere DataPower-related artifacts in general).

Just type ‘

Unfortunately, auto-complete won’t display help for custom tasks. Apparently description of Ant tasks is embedded inside Eclipse and does not seem to be extendable.

DataPower Buddy 2.3.2 Bug Fix Release

Posted on: May 28, 2012 | Posted in: DataPower, DPBuddy

Release 2.3.2 of dpbuddy fixes a single but significant issue preventing copying files (using dp:copy command) to the hard disk array. RAID is mounted under local: filesystem on the device; the name of the mount point can be found under Administration/Storage Devices/Hard Disk Array in WebGUI.

SOMA “CreateDir” action errors out when it is used to re-create the RAID mount directory. In this release of dpbuddy logic was added to ignore the error.

The updated DPBuddy package can be downloaded from dpbuddy download page.

Keeping Multiple DataPower Devices in Sync

Posted on: August 9, 2011 | Posted in: DataPower, DPBuddy

Most DataPower installations in production contain two DataPower devices with identical or similar configuration.
It is actually quite easy to keep the two devices in sync using Apache Ant and DPBuddy administration tool.
DPBuddy supports a notion of an environment prefix. The prefix groups together connectivity properties for each device:

dp.username=dpbuddy
dp.password=123 
dp.domain=deployTest
prod1.dp.xmlmgm.url=https://dp1.prod
prod2.dp.xmlmgm.url=https://dp2.prod


The above property list defines dp.username, dp.password and dp.domain properties that are common to all environments and two XML management URLs for our DataPower cluster.

Then the Ant target for importing configuration into both devices could look like this:


Note that for speed we chose to execute both imports in parallel; it is perfectly save to do it with dpbuddy as all of its tasks are thread-safe.

If your “dp:import” tasks is more complex (e.g. because of use of deployment policies), you may want to create an Ant macro for each task to avoid duplicating parameters.

MyArch, Inc. offers paid support for dpbuddy, including implementing custom enhancements. If you’re interested, please contact us as info at myarch.com.

DPBuddy — Tool For DataPower Administrators and Developers

Posted on: August 28, 2010 | Posted in: Building software, DataPower, DPBuddy, IT operations, XML Appliances

We’re pleased to announce the release of our new product, DataPower Buddy (dpbuddy). “dpbuddy” a free command-line tool for automating administration, management and deployment of IBM WebSphere DataPower appliances. The tool supports export/import, file transfer, backups and many other functions.

dpbuddy is implemented as a set of custom tasks for the popular build tool, Apache Ant.

Here is a quick example of dpbuddy in action:

This Ant task will remove remote directories if they exist, reproduce the local directory tree (all folders under “services”) on the device and upload the necessary files based on the “includes” pattern.

dpbuddy is completely free; it can be downloaded from the dpbuddy product page

dpbuddy provides many cool features, including:

* Response from the device is presented in a human-readable form as opposed to raw SOAP/XML messages. dpbuddy makes it easy to understand error and status messages.

* Powerful remote “copy” command that automatically reproduces local directory tree on the device.

* Tight integration with Ant. Ant variables can be used inside deployment policies and configuration files.

* Easy-to-use alternative to deployment policies based on XPath.

* Ability to remotely “tail” device logs. It is even possible to automatically get new log messages similarly to Unix “tail -f” command. “tail” task can also check for error patterns.

* “Export” based on naming patterns. You don’t need to know types (“classes”) of DataPower objects; simply specify a regexp pattern and dpbuddy will export all objects matching this pattern.

* Support for self-signed certificates. No need to add DataPower certificates to the JDK store.

* Support for arbitrary SOMA requests. You can use Ant variables inside a request.

* Parsing of all commands on the client. In case of XML errors, DataPower returns cryptic “internal error” message. The actual error then has to be extracted from the device logs. dpbuddy on the other hand validates management XML commands on the client and displays error messages right away.

Go to dpbuddy product page to learn more.