Overview of the Command Line Interface

This application note provides a description of the BMC Defender Command Line Interface (CLI) utilities, that can be optionally installed at a BMC Defender Server site to provide general usefulness in searching and formatting message data on the system.  These tools complement the BMC Defender system, supporting batch file (and other) scripting, creation of web methods, specialized queries, software development activities, and special applications: 

• Support for custom Alerts and the BMC Defender API—These utilities can be used as a Software Development Kit to add custom alerts, modify e-mail programs, create custom screens, and perform custom actions. 
• Support for Web Methods—Additionally, these utilities can be used as a type of Web Method, where the utilities are launched as CGI programs (to permit data to be fetched through a URL.)
• Support for exporting data—These utilities augment the various ways that data can be exported to third-party programs, furnishing numerous ways to extract, reduce, and format data logged by the system. 
• Support for batch forensics—Finally, these utilities can be used for batch processing of BMC Defender data, such as to support complex offline forensic searches of BMC Defender data.

Application notes, describing the general usage of the CLI for the preceding purposes, are presented here. Each command line utility is provided its section, containing a definition of the utility's syntax and application, along with any special notes pertaining to each program.

This section provides information about the following topics: