Customizing Asset Management › Queries › Query Designer

Query Designer

The query designer gives you an easy way to query the database. You do not need to know the database fields if you are using this tool.

The Query Designer tool lets you create or modify a query. Using this tool, you can query information about computer and users, jobs, policies, software, inventory and external directories. You can also query the database fields and create advanced queries. The left pane of the Query Designer dialog lists these items: Insert Argument with all the available arguments, Boolean Operators, Remove Argument, a preview function and a view SQL statement option.

Note: Although the user can now be registered with the Asset Collector, as can an associated trust and origin, the Query Designer does not allow user queries to be created with trust level and origin as conditions.

The right pane of the Query Designer dialog shows the arguments as you add them to the new query.

Insert Argument

General Information

Lists discovered hardware and software properties.

Inventory

Lists discovered inventory.

Software

Queries Software Packages, Discovered Software, Software Usage and File Contents.

Jobs

Queries Asset Jobs and Collect Tasks.

Policies

Queries the Query Based and Event Based policies.

Directory Query

Browses an organizational asset to query any member, or select any user to query its direct reports.

Note: To create a directory query, a directory object must be available under Control Panel, Directory Integration, Configured Directories folder.

Advanced Argument

Queries the asset management tables in the database for a specific query. Select the arguments in the Add Advanced Argument dialog.

Link Query

Opens the Select Query dialog where you can link an existing query and add the query as an argument.

Boolean Operators

Specifies the following operators that Query Designer uses to test for the validity of some condition and return a Boolean value of TRUE or FALSE.

AND

Combines two Boolean expressions and returns TRUE when both of the expressions are TRUE.

OR

Combines two conditions and returns TRUE when either expression is TRUE. When more than one logical operator is used in a statement, OR operators are evaluated after AND operators.

NOT

Reverses the value of any Boolean expression.

( )

Changes the order of evaluation.

Remove Argument

Removes the argument selected on the right pane from the Query Designer.

Preview

Runs the query and opens the Query Preview dialog to display the query result.

View SQL

Shows the SQL Query statement in the SQL View dialog. You cannot modify the SQL statement on this dialog.