In this article I'd like to show two common ways of using SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio (NWDS) for administration purposes of SAP PI.
1. How to deploy JDBC/JMS external drivers (SDA files) without JSPM ?
If you'd like to use any external JDBC/JMS driver in your PI landscape you need to deploy the drivers first using an SDA file. In the latest PI releases you can only do that using JSPM (as SDM is no longer available). However you can also try deploying SDA files using NDWS and below you will find the necessary steps to do that.
Step 1
Create an EAR project.
Step 2
Import the SDA file into this project.
Step 3
Make sure to set the J2EE server in Window - Preferences - SAP AS Java menu.
Step 4
Right click on the SDA file and deploy it. 
As you see the server will get restarted and your file will be deployed. 
2. How to use NWDS for nice log file monitoring ?
In case something goes wrong with PI you may need to check the log files. You can do that from multiple places like NetWeaver Administrator (nwa) or even from transaction AL11 from your ABAP stack. The fact is that I don't like those two tools at all because they are either slow or show the log files in a very difficult to read format. What about using NDWS for that purpose?
Step 1
Once you see your J2EE servers in the deployment view you can select "Open SAP management console" link. 
Step 2
Then in the "log files" link you can see all of your most important logs and their content (nicely formatted) below. 
Step 3
The feature I like the most is the automatic refresh. Once you enable it you will see instantly the latest entries to your log files and in most cases this will enable you to find the cause of the issue very quickly. 
The conclusion of this short article is - even if you're not a developer you can start using NDWS for other purposes. This will benefit you also in the future as in the future (even as of PI 7.3) you can do some PI configuration in NWDS already as shown in one of my previous articles:
PI/XI: PI 7.3 - accessing PI with NWDS - teaser
PI/XI: NWDS not only for java development but also for PI administration.
