What is new for scripted administration (wsadmin)

Operating Systems: i5/OS
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What is new for scripted administration (wsadmin)

This topic highlights what is new or changed, for users who are going to customize, administer, monitor, and tune production server environments using the wsadmin tool. V6.1 includes numerous improvements, but a couple of features are particularly exciting for clients who use administrative scripts:

Command assistance in the administrative console maps your administrative activities to wsadmin scripting commands, so that you can capture your console knowledge and apply it to wsadmin.
An integrated development environment is provided for script development, as part of the Application Server Toolkit.

New in V6.1! indicates new features or changes implemented at the V6.1 level. Unmarked items are V6.0 improvements that apply also to V6.1, which should interest anyone migrating to V6.1 from V5.x.

Deprecated and removed features describes features that are being replaced or removed in this or future releases.

Improved administrative scripting features

Growing set of administrative commands
Automation of administrative tasks is made easier through the AdminTask scripting object of wsadmin. Many of the more involved tasks for administration have been implemented using this new feature which supports interactive execution and combines many individual scripting commands into a single task oriented command.
Various AdminTask commands are implemented for important administrative scenarios such as server management, cluster management and resource management. AdminTask commands provide various user friendly and task oriented wsadmin commands. AdminTask commands may have multiple steps for some complicated administrative tasks similar to the wizard in the console. AdminTask commands are grouped based on their function areas.
For more information, see Commands for the AdminTask object.
New in V6.1! For security specialists, even more administrative roles are defined to provide degrees of authority that are needed to perform certain administrative functions with the wsadmin tool. The newest roles are deployer and adminsecuritymanager.
Improved help with administrative commands
Detailed help information for AdminTask commands and command groups is available through various AdminTask help commands. All AdminTask commands can be executed in interactive mode, which leads users step by step, interactively. At the end of execution, the corresponding AdminTask command is generated to help you learn the AdminTask command syntax.
Improved wsadmin tracing configuration
New in V6.1! You can configure the wsadmin client side log file and audit each wsadmin session. The wsadmin.properties file includes new properties for specifying to append to a trace file and to name a default scripting interface.
See Tracing operations with the wsadmin tool and Administrative properties for scripting.
wsadmin no longer case sensitive
New in V6.1! Commands and parameters for the wsadmin tool are not case sensitive. That is, wsadmin will an accept any of these arguments: –-tracefile, -traceFile, -traceFile, or tRaCEFile. wsadmin also infers the scripting language by looking at the suffix of the script file you specified on the command line.
Simplified administration
New in V6.1! Command assistance in the administrative console maps your administrative activities to wsadmin scripting commands, so that you can capture your console knowledge and apply it to wsadmin. Using command assistance, you can view wsadmin scripting commands in the Jython language for the last action run in the administrative console.
See Accessing command assistance from the administrative console.
Scripting enhancements for configuring applications New in V6.1! Scripting enhancements for application configuration include:

You can explicitly target an application module to multiple target servers and clusters, such as targeting an application to an application server and to a Web server.
There’s more flexibility in specifying step parameters, due to new wildcard usage that keeps you from having to know the details of application structure or deployment targets when manipulating bindings and deployment information. You needn’t know all of the step parameters and can specify only those that are required to configure the application artifact. You can specify data for multiple rows in a step, using a pattern such as .*war*
You now can add to or remove from the set of existing deployment targets rather without replacing them.

See Deploying applications using scripting.
Local and connected mode
New in V6.1! The administrative commands can be available in connected or local mode. The set of available administrative commands is determined when you start a scripting client in connected or local mode.
See the documentation for each scripting object, available from Using the wsadmin scripting objects.

Related concepts

What is new in this release
What is new for security specialists

Growing set of administrative commands	Automation of administrative tasks is made easier through the AdminTask scripting object of wsadmin. Many of the more involved tasks for administration have been implemented using this new feature which supports interactive execution and combines many individual scripting commands into a single task oriented command. Various AdminTask commands are implemented for important administrative scenarios such as server management, cluster management and resource management. AdminTask commands provide various user friendly and task oriented wsadmin commands. AdminTask commands may have multiple steps for some complicated administrative tasks similar to the wizard in the console. AdminTask commands are grouped based on their function areas. For more information, see Commands for the AdminTask object. New in V6.1! For security specialists, even more administrative roles are defined to provide degrees of authority that are needed to perform certain administrative functions with the wsadmin tool. The newest roles are deployer and adminsecuritymanager.
Improved help with administrative commands	Detailed help information for AdminTask commands and command groups is available through various AdminTask help commands. All AdminTask commands can be executed in interactive mode, which leads users step by step, interactively. At the end of execution, the corresponding AdminTask command is generated to help you learn the AdminTask command syntax.
Improved wsadmin tracing configuration	New in V6.1! You can configure the wsadmin client side log file and audit each wsadmin session. The wsadmin.properties file includes new properties for specifying to append to a trace file and to name a default scripting interface. See Tracing operations with the wsadmin tool and Administrative properties for scripting.
wsadmin no longer case sensitive	New in V6.1! Commands and parameters for the wsadmin tool are not case sensitive. That is, wsadmin will an accept any of these arguments: –-tracefile, -traceFile, -traceFile, or tRaCEFile. wsadmin also infers the scripting language by looking at the suffix of the script file you specified on the command line.
Simplified administration	New in V6.1! Command assistance in the administrative console maps your administrative activities to wsadmin scripting commands, so that you can capture your console knowledge and apply it to wsadmin. Using command assistance, you can view wsadmin scripting commands in the Jython language for the last action run in the administrative console. See Accessing command assistance from the administrative console.
Scripting enhancements for configuring applications	New in V6.1! Scripting enhancements for application configuration include: You can explicitly target an application module to multiple target servers and clusters, such as targeting an application to an application server and to a Web server. There’s more flexibility in specifying step parameters, due to new wildcard usage that keeps you from having to know the details of application structure or deployment targets when manipulating bindings and deployment information. You needn’t know all of the step parameters and can specify only those that are required to configure the application artifact. You can specify data for multiple rows in a step, using a pattern such as .war You now can add to or remove from the set of existing deployment targets rather without replacing them. See Deploying applications using scripting.
Local and connected mode	New in V6.1! The administrative commands can be available in connected or local mode. The set of available administrative commands is determined when you start a scripting client in connected or local mode. See the documentation for each scripting object, available from Using the wsadmin scripting objects.