Anyone tried the new Weblogic Scripting Tool (WLST)?

Question

Has anyone tried using the new WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) that was recently
posted on the dev2dev WebLogic Utilities site: http://dev2dev.bea.com/resourcelibrary/utilitiestools/adminmgmt.jsp
It looks to be a handy tool that is built upon jython and enables you to easily
navigate, inspect and manipulate the WebLogic MBean tree on a running server.
It also has a nice scripting tool which allows you to convert a config.xml file
into a script that can be run to recreate a domain or specific resources within
the domain. This is exactly something I have been looking for because we occasionally
recreate domains or subsets of a domain for testing and POC purposes.
The utility is fairly well documented and works well for the most part. The only
issue I have run into so far is that is does not seem to understand JMS Distributed
Destinations. When I try to convert a config.xml that contains a DD to a script
it throws a null pointer exception. I have not tried a cluster yet.
I noticed the utility was authored by someone at BEA. Is there potential that
BEA will support this in the future if it catches on? Has anyone had experience
with WLST or jython that would cause you to reccomend (or not) using it?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Darryl,
Thanks for the valuable feedback. My comments are inline.
Darryl Stoflet wrote:
As a fairly long time wlshell user who recently started testing wlst there are
few features I have found lacking in wlst.
1. For monitoring purposes I am frequently using the -g and -r options to wlshell's
get command for graphing and repeating respectivelyI haven't looked at -g and -r options in wlshell, but will do so.
Although there is no graphical monitoring of attributes in wlst, but
there is certainly some monitoring capability (which will be enhanced
further in the coming version). Please take a look at the
monitorAttribute() function.
wls:/(offline)> help('monitorAttribute')
Description:
Monitors the specified attribute every by polling every interval.
Syntax:
monitorAttribute(attributeName, interval, monitorFile)
attributeName = Name of the attribue that you would like to monitor.
interval = Time (in seconds) to wait before the next fetch
monitorFile=[optional] File path where the monitored data will be
written to.
Example:
wls:/mydomain/runtime/ServerRuntimes/myserver/ExecuteQueueRuntimes/weblogic.kernel.Default>
monitorAttribute("ServicedRequestTotalCount",10)
Press Return to quit monitoring
Monitoring started for attribute ServicedRequestTotalCount
wls:/(offline)>
>
2. wlshell 2.0 adds the option when connecting to the admin server to also connect
to all managed servers in that domain. This is a nice feature for monitoring because
you then have access to all the runtime mbeans in each managed serverYes, this indeed seems to be a very nice feature. We will consider this
for our next release.
>
3. There is not a good way to pass cmd line options(variables) to wlst. In wlshell
I can send cmd line options via -v. I have tried something similar with wlst using
-loadProperties but this is a little laborious because I do not necessarily want
to create a properties file when a passing in only one or two variables. Also
I find loadProperties lacking somewhat (see 4 below)ok, I just realised that there is indeed a bug in wlst where the command
line arguments are not being honored. In Jython one can access the
command line arguments from the sys.argv variable. For example,
java weblogic.WLST -i foo.py var1 var2 var3
Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
Welcome to Weblogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
Type help() for help on available commands
wls:/offline> print sys.argv
['foo.py', 'var1', 'var2', 'var3']
wls:/offline>
But this isn't working properly, please keep using the loadProperties
untill this has been fixed.
>
4) loadProperties treats all created variables as strings. While this is understandable
from the perspective that getProperty returns a string, it would be nice if wlst
was smart enough that when a property is numbers only its an int, otherwise a
string etc.
wlshell does this logic/conversion for you which really simplifies calling methods
that expect the particular datatype. To get around this problem you can create a script file say,
variables.py which would look like,
# variables that will be used
theInterpreter.set('var1',10)
theInterpreter.set('var2','i am a string')
java weblogic.WLST variables.py
Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
Welcome to Weblogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
Type help() for help on available commands
wls:/(offline)> print var1
10
wls:/(offline)> print var2
'i am a string'
>
5. I'd like to be able to send cmd output etc to a file while running within wlst.
In wlshell its a simple as adding >> filename to the end of the command. In wlst it is not as simple as doing >>, it is more than that. You can
choose any output stream to direct your output to. In your case you can
create a FileOutputStream and route the output to this stream for any
particular command.
Example,
# create a file output stream say fos
from java.io import FileOutputStream
fos = FileOutputStream("output.txt")
# save the default output stream to a variable to
# switch it back
sys.stdout=fos
# Now all output for any function will go to output.txt
ls()
cd('foo')
# after done with your functions switch it back
sys.stdout=origOutput
This is the right Jython way to do it. This works for all output streams
, very useful when you embed an interpreter in a servlet and would like
to display the output via a PrintStream etc.
>
>
All in all wlst is a nice tool. Personally if the above features were added it
would be much easier to transistion to wlst for good.
Also I really like the wlst offline tool. Its nice to be able to do the whole
create and configure domain process with one tool. Will this be supported. Yes indeed. We are working on merging both the tools into one.
I do
not want to rely on it too much if it will not work in future weblogic versions.It will be supported in future release of weblogic.
Thanks,
-satya
>
Thanks,
Darryl
"Steve Hess" <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello,
I am the BEA Product Manager behind WLST.
WLST, as it appears today on dev2dev, is an early release version of
a tool that
BEA does intend to support as part of our next major release. We decided
to issue
early versions of the tool because of the demand for a supported scripting
solution,
and to generate feedback from our user community. I encourage you to
work with
WLST, and assure you that this tool represents our current direction
in management
scripting.
Also note, this newsgroup can be used to issue questions, concerns and
feedback
about WLST. The engineering and PM team will monitor this group and
respond to
your questions as quickly as we can. While we will not be able to respond
to
every feature request, we really value your suggestions, and will endeavor
to
improve the tool in ways that meet your real-world needs.
Cheers,
Steve Hess
Director, WLS PM
"George Lupanoff" <[email protected]> wrote:
Has anyone tried using the new WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) that was
recently
posted on the dev2dev WebLogic Utilities site: http://dev2dev.bea.com/resourcelibrary/utilitiestools/adminmgmt.jsp
It looks to be a handy tool that is built upon jython and enables you
to easily
navigate, inspect and manipulate the WebLogic MBean tree on a running
server.
It also has a nice scripting tool which allows you to convert a config.xml
file
into a script that can be run to recreate a domain or specific resources
within
the domain. This is exactly something I have been looking for because
we occasionally
recreate domains or subsets of a domain for testing and POC purposes.
The utility is fairly well documented and works well for the most part.
The only
issue I have run into so far is that is does not seem to understandJMS
Distributed
Destinations. When I try to convert a config.xml that contains a DDto
a script
it throws a null pointer exception. I have not tried a cluster yet.
I noticed the utility was authored by someone at BEA. Is there potential
that
BEA will support this in the future if it catches on? Has anyone had
experience
with WLST or jython that would cause you to reccomend (or not) using
it?
Thanks.