Importing Oracle Audit Evidence Data from 3rd Party Sources

[mfranz]

Hi,

One of my customers is running BMC Discovery. Data quality is good so far and, as always, having a managed data source makes life easy for the license management team. Oracle inventory is currently collected via remote inventory rule. And again, for the most part, data quality is fine.

An idea is now to hand the Oracle database inventory process over to BMC. I can only guess that they rely on the same Oracle scripts for inventory. That again, would take the operational pain from the license management team, which I would consider to be a good thing.

My issue is that the standard adapter does not seem to cover Oracle "audit" evidence. It will import Oracle DB installer, but nothing that will help with licensing specific database features.

Do you think it would be feasible to enhance inventory adapters for like BMC Discovery or HP Universal Discovery to import such data to FNMS?

Best regards,

Markward

[JohnSorensenDK]

@mfranz 

Please be aware that BMC Discovery isn't in Oracle's certified list of tools for executing the LMS scripts before requesting this through an enhancement request.

Thanks,

[mfranz]

Hi John,

If publisher verification/certification would be my concern, there wouldn't be much left, I could use FNMS for 😉

For Micro Focus Universal Discovery (formerly HP) there is a standard FNMS adapter AND the tool is validated by Oracle. Would this be a better use case for bringing in Oracle audit data to FNMS?

Also I would like to argue that one of the strengths of FNMS is to bring data from all kind of sources together and be the single source of truth regarding software asset management. At least that is how it is perceived by customers and used to marketed as well. And also the approach always was to import what's already there instead of collecting the same data twice. I guess it would be in this spirit to (optionally) offer a way to import this data, even if it may not be validated by the publisher.

This is not for me, I just think this could really improve FNMS and how it is used by license management folks.

Best regards,

Markward

[JohnSorensenDK]

@mfranz 

Please raise it as an enhancement request for it to be evaluated.

Thanks,

[JanMaas]

Hi,

the FNMS implementation at our customer site (Telco) is using a customized adapter to process Oracle data from BMC ADDM (Discovery). This customization has been delivered by Softline Solutions. It is still being updated from time to time to get better results, but overall, it is working fine.

The customer is aware of the Oracle certified way of gathering data using Flexera agents, but the customer is of the opinion that it should be their decision which source to use for Oracle licensing reports.

It would be nice if the customization would be replaced by a standard Flexera solution.

Best regards

Jan Maas, Tech Mahindra 

[JohnSorensenDK]

@JanMaas 

Please make sure to get this registered as an idea through the Flexera Ideas portal 

Thanks,

[JanMaas]

Thanks for the tip; just submitted it in the Flexera Ideas Portal