[jboss-as7-dev] Web console vs. CLI vs. CLI GUI

[Misty Stanley-Jones]

On May 19, 2012, at 4:53 AM, ssilvert at redhat.com wrote:

> CLI GUI is not just for former CLI users.  It is also the perfect
> teaching tool for admins who want to learn and understand the management
> model.  It will be a great tool for turning a novice into an expert. 
> And experts tend to be great technology evangelists, so we want more and
> more of those.

I'd like to add a data point to this discussion. The Documentation team have used the CLI GUI extensively to quickly build CLI commands for the documentation, because we have found the CLI difficult to intuitively understand and document. Before the CLI GUI, we had to use the XSD files to build up the XML by hand, paste it into the standalone.xml, and fix things until the server started cleanly. The model did not always follow the XSD files exactly, and it was a challenge.

The CLI GUI is a great tool for building a "cheat sheet" or learning about all of the different settings that are available. For instance, when documenting the operations available for manipulating the Transaction Manager, I started with what was exposed in the Console, then went to the CLI GUI to see what I'd missed. I was then able to ask intelligent questions about those extra operations, and document them as being CLI-only. 

So whatever persona matches most closely with "technical writer" (probably somewhere between Admin and Developer, but more closely aligned with Admin) benefits greatly from the CLI GUI. The same paradigm integrated into the web Console would be even more convenient.

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