Q: “Is there an IDE for DataPower?”
Answer: No. The web client is used to access most of the features”
I think that there probably should be an investment (or direction) from IBM about how to go about doing the development work for DataPower. What I say this, I mean what is the recommended IDE to do your XSLT transformation work? It’s true that you don’t need an IDE for development in the same vein that you can use WebSphere Application Server without an IDE. You can, but why would you?
Web clients are good for simple tasks (ex WebSphere Admin Console) but not for development efforts. How can I work on my datapower rules when I’m at home off the network? Currently the answer is that you can’t.
Of course, I’m not an expert and I know theres some kind of DataPower plug-in for WebSphere Integration Developer but I’m not sure what it does.
For Datapower related development, We have used XML SPY with DP plugin for XSLT ,Curl and JMeter tool.These tools worked very well for us.
That plugin allows you to run your XSLT you create in eclipse on DataPower – in short it pushes both the XML and XSLT to a loopback XMLFW and you get the response, tweak and submit again – I personally use the file-management to edit my xsl’s but I find as we move to a more complex XML based IT environment that is starting to hinder efforts…