WUM3 New Features

WSO2 had been looking into the possibilities of improving the update delivery mechanism for several years. As a result, WSO2 Update Manager (WUM) was developed two years ago. The latest version, WUM 3.0, was released two weeks back in parallel to the WSO2 US Con.  This article will discuss the new features of the WUM 3.0.

The novelty begins with the auto-migration mechanism. Your migration experience from WUM 2.0 to WUM 3.0 is seamless. At the very first run of the WUM 3.0, it will automatically detect the previous WUM installation ("Older WUM home(/Users/<yourname>/.wum-wso2) detected.") and ask whether you want to migrate. If you select "yes" a new WUM home will be created at "/Users/<yourname>/.wum3" with all your previous product packs and updated packs. However, you have the flexibility of starting off with a fresh WUM home by selecting "no" if you don't want to continue with the previous packs.

Next, the most awaited feature for WUM, WUM Channels. A channel is nothing but a mechanism to deliver a filtered set of updates. As an initiative, we released two channels.

• Channel "full": this channel delivers all the fixes, including bug fixes, security fixes, improvements, etc.

This channel is preferred by many, who are managing dynamic requirements and continuous development. As this channel delivers various types of updates, it helps to stabilize the system in a highly evolving environment by proactively providing fixes.

• Channel "security": this channel only delivers security fixes.

As opposed to the channel "full" the channel "security" provides only the security updates. This channel will help the users with static requirements who infrequently push changes to the production environment. As the production system is stable and seldom changed, channel "security" helps to push only security fixes into the production system.

Another new feature is to create WUM updated packs using a timestamp. This feature was initially developed to help WSO2 support, in building a WUM updated product pack to a specific timestamp given by WSO2 clients. However, we decided to expose this feature to all WUM users as this would be useful to create a WUM updated pack (to particular timestamp) in case you accidentally delete an updated pack form WUM home.