Software inventory of a device group
Another of the major functions within the CM 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. The alternative method of creating the list on demand signifies that the managed device would enter a CPU and disk intensive operation, which would result in a slow down of the managed device for up to a minute. 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 also 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.
The Software Inventory node of the console displays a single list of all software packages found on the remote device. The list is generated by the agent and uploaded into the database at regular intervals. As with the other inventory information, all entries are stored in the database to be available even if the actual device is off-line.
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