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Comparing Commit Scripts and Automation Scripts

Commit and automation scripts are similar in many ways. Both are written in Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) or Stylesheet Language Alternative Syntax (SLAX) and are based on two application programming interfaces (APIs): the JUNOS Extensible Markup Language (XML) API and the JUNOScript API. Both types of scripts allow you to customize and control the operation of your routing platform. Both can perform any function available through JUNOS XML and JUNOScript remote procedure calls (RPCs).

The JUNOS software includes a single XSLT processor that controls commit and automation scripts and defines all the XSLT extension functions and named templates available with commit and automation scripts. These extension functions and named templates allow you to perform operations in your scripts that are otherwise difficult or impossible to perform with standard XSLT and XPath. (For more information, see JUNOS Extension Functions and JUNOS Named Templates.)

Commit scripts and automation scripts are essentially the same machinery, called at different times, with different input and different output. The differences between commit and automation scripts are as follows:

Input—The candidate configuration is always passed to commit scripts as input. Although you can write an automation script that examines the candidate configuration, automation scripts receive no automatic input.
Execution—Commit scripts are executed automatically at commit time only. Automation scripts are executed any time, either manually or automatically, in response to a system log event.

For example, both commit and automation scripts can inspect and change a configuration. With commit scripts, the inspection happens each time a new candidate configuration is committed. With automation scripts, the inspection happens in response to a system event or when you decide to manually run the automation script. For a more thorough overview, see Commit Scripts Overview and Automation Scripts Overview.

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