Software catalog

A software catalog is a document used to store knowledge base data and share it between different applications or between different instances of the knowledge base. A software catalog can be imported into the Maximo® database from Software Knowledge Base Toolkit or Asset Discovery for z/OS®, separately purchased products from IBM. The software catalog records can then be viewed and managed from the Software Catalog application.

A software catalog such as the one in Software Knowledge Base Toolkit can be shared with different applications or between different instances of the software knowledge base. For example, it can be used by the discovery tool IBM® Tivoli® Asset Discovery for Distributed to efficiently locate distributed software.

The information that a software catalog contains can also be used to help analyze the structure of software bundles and determine the licensing dependencies between the enclosing software and its bundled products and components. For example, a definition of a software bundle that consists of multiple products and components will contain information on all the bundled software, their licensing in relation to the enclosing product, and every signature used to detect them as installed or running on computer systems in a given environment.

A software catalog from Software Knowledge Base Toolkit contains data on the following knowledge base entries:

Because it is portable, a software catalog can be imported into the Maximo database. From there it can be used in the Software Catalog application to view and manage catalog definitions for products, versions, or releases. The optional Software Knowledge Base Toolkit is a component for creating and maintaining a full set of software knowledge information provided by IBM, as well as for customizing and extending that information. The software catalog derives from this information.

To create a software catalog import file, a knowledge base administrator uses the (separately purchased) Software Knowledge Base Toolkit component for distributed software, or the (separately purchased) Asset Discovery for z/OS product for mainframe software. Working in one of those environments, the knowledge base administrator creates the catalog file in XML format. Then, working from your current environment, an administrator imports the software catalog into the Maximo database using integration framework.

Administrators can automate the importing of a software catalog. With Software Knowledge Base Toolkit, for example, the knowledge base administrator publishes the software catalog, which picks up a snapshot of the latest knowledge base and places it in a designated import directory. From there it can be automatically imported into the Maximo database. Upon importing it, the updated software catalog version replaces the previous catalog version in the Maximo database.

To retrieve the published catalog, an administrator here sets up a cron task to send an automatic request on a regular schedule to Software Knowledge Base Toolkit. The cron task then retrieves the published software catalog of distributed data from the designated import directory.

Similarly, another cron task can be set up to import a software catalog of mainframe data from Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS. Unlike the software catalog in Software Knowledge Base Toolkit, however, the mainframe catalog cannot be downloaded automatically. The Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS administrator must export it to a file system location that the Maximo database has access to. Then a cron task can retrieve the software catalog of mainframe data from the file system location. If there is no new data, the cron task imports nothing and checks again at the next scheduled time.

An administrator can import other, less robust, noncatalog software information into the Maximo database from other databases populated by either IBM or non-IBM discovery tools. This alternative would be typical for businesses that do not use IBM Tivoli Asset Discovery for Distributed (which works with the knowledge base), or do not use Asset Discovery for z/OS. These other imports, from discovery databases, are done using integration software such as Integration Composer instead of integration framework. As with software catalog data, the imported discovery data is displayed in the Software Catalog application and can be referenced on the Software tab of the Computers application.



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