DPBuddy Update for April 2014

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.

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 
```
To copy files to DataPower, you could do this:
```
dpbuddy copy -toDir wsdlDir -flatten -includes dpfiles/**/*.wsdl -cleanDirectories 
```
The attributes of Ant tasks are translated into the command line options, so that DPBuddy commands have the same capabilities as Ant tasks.
Simplified way of specifying DataPower objects in export, assertState, quiesce and other tasks. 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 “includes” attribute so you don’t have to specify the nested fileset.
You can specify environment prefix as an attribute of any task/command or using the “envPrefix” property.
“Export” now gets rid of unused namespace declarations, so the resulting XML file is cleaner.
“Import” now supports “assertObjectsUp”, “replaceVars” and other extra attributes so you can create checkpoints and verify the object state as part of the import task/command. This makes your task declarations more concise and easier to understand.

If you have any other feature requests, suggestions or questions, please comment on this post. We appreciate your feedback.