Many API-Connect customers use both DPOD and API-Connect Analytics as complementary products. API-Connect Analytics is used to analyze API metrics (invocations, response codes, consumers, latency) and provides basic troubleshooting data (such as the transaction latency view) embedded in the API-Connect API Manager and the Developer Portal, while DPOD provides debug-level transactional data for best-in-class troubleshooting as well as gateway-level metrics (e.g.: CPU, memory), and is used to accelerate API adoption, inspect the DataPower gateway configuration, send alerts and manage the DataPower gateways.

The key differences between DPOD and API-Connect Analytics are:

1. DPOD provides debug-level transactional data for best-in-class troubleshooting, including payloads (requests/responses) and headers of the consumer and invoke policies, input and output of map policies, context variables, etc., while API-Connect Analytics provides API metrics and basic troubleshooting data.

2. DPOD collects the logs from DataPower, including transactional logs, gateway-level logs and custom logs emitted by API developers.

3. DPOD publishes alerts based on latency, errors, certificate expiry, availability, invocation rate, error messages, configuration issues, etc.

4. DPOD scans the DataPower gateway configuration to detect failed objects (e.g. GatewayPeering objects that are down).

5. DPOD includes DataPower management features (backups, firmware upgrades, etc.) for virtual and physical gateways.

6. DPOD is installed as a standalone instance with it own fine-grained access control, and can monitor and manage DataPower gateways from multiple API-Connect instances/clusters in one central dashboard.

7. DPOD shows correlated transactions (transactions that share the same global transaction ID) and fully supports standalone DataPower services (e.g.: MPGW, WSP) for customers that use both API-Connect and standalone DataPower services.

8. DPOD retention period is limited due to the huge amount of transactional data it collects, while API-Connect Analytics can store statistics for a longer term.

DPOD collects the following types of information from the DataPower gateways:

1. Transaction logs (including errors and latency) and system events (e.g.: battery failure) via Syslog log targets.

2. Payloads via the Web Services Management Agent, API-Connect Analytics Offload or probes.

3. Debug-level transactional information by utilizing probes via the REST management interface.

4. Gateway-level Metrics (CPU, memory, load, file systems, Ethernet interfaces, fan, temperature, service-level resources, etc.) via the XML management interface.

5. Certificate expiry alerts by utilizing the Certificate Monitor.

6. Service configuration via the XML management interface.

7. Failed objects via the XML management interface.

8. Restart information via the audit logs.

DPOD includes the following unique features:

1. Debug-level transactional data for best-in-class troubleshooting:

   1. Detailed view of each step, including latency, errors, invocations, etc. up to debug-level data (using the gateway probe).

   2. The transaction logs, including custom logs emitted by developers.

   3. Transaction correlation across APIs/services/gateways.

2. Error analysis and recommendations based on the extensive transactional data and DataPower-specific knowledge.

3. Tens of dashboards tailored for the DataPower gateway and for different types of users (admins, operations, developers, consumers).

4. Ready-to-use alerts about certificates that are about to expire, high transaction latency, specific errors, rate limits, failed objects, etc.

5. Detection of failed objects within the DataPower configuration (e.g. GatewayPeering objects that are down).

6. Faster development and adoption of APIs and services using a self-service approach based on roles and permissions in prod and non-prod.

7. Gateway management features such as backups, firmware upgrades, etc.

8. DevOps features, such as importing services, updating WSDL, etc.

9. Standalone DataPower services configuration sampling, including a log of configuration changes over time.

10. Detection of gateway restarts based on audit logs, and early failing transactions (e.g.: TLS failures).