Solved: Does SaaS Manager use Web Scraping to collect information?

tbesse · ‎Apr 15, 2019

I hear that SaaS Manager uses Web Scraping to collect information. Can someone explain what if that's true, what it does, why we are using this methodology and if we have any plans to retire this approach in the future? Thank you.

Senior Solution Architect in the SE team
(Anything expressed here is my own view and not necessarily that of my employer, Flexera)

smccullough1 · ‎Apr 15, 2019

Hello!

We have utilized web scraping as a means of data extraction in the past. Web Scraping means we're pulling information directly from the UI of a particular application, sort of like we're signing in on your behalf and gathering information that way. This is used in cases where a public API has not yet been made available by a vendor.

We can gather similar information from web scraping as we would with an API integration, however, the connections are not as stable as their API counterparts and access can be blocked easily.

Because of this, we are no longer building web-scraped integrations and we plan on discontinuing old integrations that follow this methodology. We will be utilizing API and Web Services only for all integrations going forward.

Hope this helps!

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smccullough1 · ‎Apr 15, 2019

Hello!

We have utilized web scraping as a means of data extraction in the past. Web Scraping means we're pulling information directly from the UI of a particular application, sort of like we're signing in on your behalf and gathering information that way. This is used in cases where a public API has not yet been made available by a vendor.

We can gather similar information from web scraping as we would with an API integration, however, the connections are not as stable as their API counterparts and access can be blocked easily.

Because of this, we are no longer building web-scraped integrations and we plan on discontinuing old integrations that follow this methodology. We will be utilizing API and Web Services only for all integrations going forward.

Hope this helps!