Management Pack Best Practices Analyzer (MPBPA) is a best practice analyzer that is used to review your management pack, and which offers suggestions for how to fix common mistakes. It is similar in function to FXCop. MPBPA provides the following key features:
- Identification of best practices that have
not been followed in a management pack
- Automatic resolution of certain violations,
including before and after diff
- Extensive customizability, allowing you to
scan only for violations relevant to your project and to group them
as desired
- UI and command-line interfaces
- Reporting functionality for violations
Running MPBPA
MPBPA is available in the Authoring console. To run MPBPA, click Tools and then click Analyze with MPBPA.
 Note |
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| While you are working with MPBPA, the Authoring console will not be accessible to prevent external changes from occurring to your management pack. |
MPBPA can be also be run directly from the command line. The executable is located in the Program Files\System Center Authoring Console 2007 directory.
Type MPBPAv2 for invocation parameters.
After MPBPA scans your management pack, any violations are displayed.
Resolving Violations Automatically
Supported violations can automatically be resolved. To use this functionality, select resolvable violations by checking the box next to them, and click Fix Checked Violation(s).
Where prompted, enter the required fields to continue. Note that you are able to apply the same set of inputs to resolve all similar violations, or skip all similar violations by clicking the appropriate checkboxes.
You can preview the changes that MPBPA will make to your management pack by clicking Preview.
After this process is complete, the fixed violations will be displayed as Fixed in the UI. Clicking Rescan will remove them permanently.
Configuration Options
Configuration options are accessed by clicking Configure on the MPBPA main screen. The Violations Groups tab allows the following functionality:
- Select which violations are scanned for
- Move violations from their default groups to
other groups
- Create custom groups
- Export and Import your configuration
The Preferences tab allows you to select which comparer application (diff tool) to use. This application will be used to provide the preview functionality when a violation is being auto-resolved.
Reporting
The ability to generate a report is provided directly in the main UI screen, and is run by clicking Generate Report.
Your default xml viewer will be opened with the report. This report contains the same violations as displayed on your screen. Fixed violations will not be shown. Note that you are also able to obtain this report from the command line.
Troubleshooting
MPBPA can be resource-intensive, particularly when scanning very large management packs. If you are scanning a management pack with more than 800 rules and monitors and your computer does not have adequate memory, consider using the report version through the command line, or using a subset of the rules at one time.