Administering MobileFirst applications through the command line

You can administer MobileFirst applications through the mfpadm program.

Comparison with other facilities

You can run administration operations with IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation in the following ways:

The MobileFirst Operations Console, which is interactive.
The mfpadm Ant task.
The mfpadm program.
The MobileFirst administration REST services.

The mfpadm Ant task, mfpadm program, and REST services are useful for automated or unattended execution of operations, such as the following use cases:

Eliminating operator errors in repetitive operations, or
Operating outside the operator's normal working hours, or
Configuring a production server with the same settings as a test or preproduction server.

The mfpadm program and the mfpadm Ant task are simpler to use and have better error reporting than the REST services. The advantage of the mfpadm program over the mfpadm Ant task is that it is easier to integrate when integration with operating system commands is already available. Moreover, it is more suitable to interactive use.

Prerequisites

The mfpadm tool is installed with the MobileFirst Server installer. In the rest of this page, product_install_dir indicates the installation directory of the MobileFirst Server installer.

The mfpadm command is provided in the product_install_dir/shortcuts/ directory as a set of scripts:

mfpadm for UNIX / Linux
mfpadm.bat for Windows

These scripts are ready to run, which means that they do not require specific environment variables. If the environment variable JAVA_HOME is set, the scripts accept it.

To use the mfpadm program, either put the product_install_dir/shortcuts/ directory into your PATH environment variable, or reference its absolute file name in each call.

For more information about running the MobileFirst Server installer, see Running IBM® Installation Manager.