Configuring Asset Management › How to Create a Custom Software Signature › DMScript Extensions

DMScript Extensions

Creating Software Definitions and Detection Records

When you create custom Intellisigs, call the DMScript functions within your Intellisig script for reporting software records that are detected on the agent computer. DMScript provides built-in functions that write detected software records to an output file.

Note: DMScript is a scripting language that provides a common means of executing commands on agents. For more information about DMScript, see the Desktop Management Scripting Language guide in the CA Client Automation bookshelf.

The Intellisig script must call the functions in the following order:

1. OpenDetectedSoftwareOutputFiles
2. CreateDetectedSoftwareProduct
3. CreateDetectedSoftwareRelease
4. CreateDetectedSoftwarePatch
5. CreateDetectedSoftwareReleaseInstance
6. CloseDetectedSoftwareOutputFiles

For more information about Intellisigs functions, see Desktop Management Scripting Language guide.

Hierarchy of Intellisig Objects

Understanding the hierarchy of Intellisig objects is important when you create custom Intellisigs. The objects must exist in a particular hierarchy. Each object has a parent, which must be created beforehand. The hierarchy is as follows:

• An Intellisig contains information to detect a number of products.
• A product, for example, Microsoft Office, has a number of releases such as Office 2003, office 2010, and so on.
• A release has a number of patches that contains fixes.
• A computer has a number of instances of a release or patch installed.
• Products, releases, and patches are created as software definitions and instances are created as discovered software.
• When an object is created, DMscript checks for the availability of the parent object. For example, if a release is created, then DMScript checks whether the parent product exists. This check helps ensure that proper relationships are created between the related product, release, patch, and instances.

Fixed and Variable Parameters

The functions for creating detected software output files provide a way for future extensions by accepting fixed parameters and variable parameters. While fixed parameters are mandatory, variable parameters are optional. Variable parameters typically include the properties that are associated with the Intellisig and provide a means for adding additional properties. The functions can be expanded in future to add variable parameters without impacting existing scripts.

The following guidelines are applicable for specifying and using fixed and variable parameters:

• Fixed parameters are mandatory and require values explicitly.
• Variable parameters are optional and specified in the OptionalProperties parameter. The OptionalProperties parameter is a string and can contain any number of property name and value pairs using the following format:

  property=value | property=value |…
  

• Use the | character to separate the property name and value pairs. Spaces before and after the | character are not significant.
• Unknown properties in the OptionalProperties generate warnings but do not stop the script. This behavior lets the agents of varying releases to process Intellisig scripts sent from the domain manager. If a script uses a property that is unknown to a particular version of DMScript, the property is ignored but a warning is written to the DMScript trace log.
• Unknown values in the optional parameters raise a warning but the value is passed on to the engine to interpret or ignore. For example, the value of the bitness parameter can only be 32 or 64 but if you pass 16, the script does not fail.

Supported Architectures

Following is the list of architecture names that you can pass to the DMscript functions that write the detected records to the software detection output file:

• AMD64
• ARM
• Alpha
• Big Endian MIPS
• HP Precision
• IA64
• IBM S/390
• Little Endian MIPS
• Motorola 680x0
• PA_RISC
• PowerPC
• SPARC
• s390x
• x64
• x86

Error Codes and Optional Properties

The LogDetectedSoftwareError method accepts the error messages in a specific format. The error messages are localizable strings that are generated when there is an Intellisig execution error at the agent. The error messages are then sent to the domain manager and displayed as a status comment against the software inventory collect task in DSM Explorer.

Example: LogDetectedSoftwareError

LogDetectedSoftwareError("ISE:00400","PARAM5=Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 64 en-us|PARAM6=VersionNumber=6.1.7600 |VersionLabel=6.1.7600 |Language=en-us |Bitness=64 |Architecture=x64 |Manufacturer=Microsoft Corporation|Category=Operating Systems |Description=The Microsoft Windows 7 Product|PARAM7=SWDETECT_BADARGS");

The Intellisig scanner automatically raises the following error messages to report issues related to launching an Intellisig:

You can raise the following error messages to handle issues related to creating an Intellisig: