Viewing software inventory of a device

One of the major functions within the BCM agent is to compile a list of installed software applications on the remote client for inspection by the administrator. This is based on a periodically generated installed software file list, which is passed through a translation file to produce the actual list of installed packages or applications. The installed software file list is generated periodically because the work load required for this operation can be quite high. Therefore it is desirable to have a list already prepared when the Administrator needs to view it. An additional benefit of a periodic update is the possibility of monitoring the changes in the list and thus provide early alerts of virus attacks or unauthorized software installation.

The generation of the installed software file list is based on a number of parameters which are set in the configuration file, SoftwareInventory.ini. Same as the hardware inventory, the list of software inventory can be filtered and limited or extended through an .xml file. This file can be edited and is distributed from the console or can be accessed upon request from the agent for updates. For more information about this subject refer to chapter Software Inventory of the technical reference manual.

You can access the software inventory via the following aspects of it:

• Scanned Applications
• License Units