Installer Evidence

FlexNet Manager Suite 2023 R2 (On-Premises)

Installer evidence is a record of software installation on an inventory device. 'Normalized' installer evidence (meaning installer evidence that includes standard string values as noted below) allows the automatic matching of the evidence to the application that it represents, using the Application Recognition Library (ARL), frequently updated by Flexera.

• Are new records created by imports from the staging database table? — Yes.
• Can records with matching compound keys be updated by these imports? — No.
• Are records unmatched by an import from the staging table deleted from the compliance database (provided that the staging database for BMC Discovery data is the last/only source for these records)? — Yes (records linking applications to inventory devices are deleted under these conditions).

Installer evidence mapping

The properties for installer evidence are taken as a UNION of values from the DiscoveredPackages_ci, InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci, and SoftwareInstance_ci tables of the staging database. The union is used to create a de-duplicated, distinct set of values as listed below. If there are clashes in the values (for example, if one table lists the Publisher as Adobe and another lists to Vendor as Adobe Software), separate records are created of distinct evidence listing each of those different values. Since most of the properties are combined to form the primary key for the compliance database, this may give the appearance of duplicate records at first glance, so examine the values carefully for slight variations that trigger the creation of separate inventory evidence records.

Most of these properties are available in listings such as the Installer evidence tab of the All Evidence page; and within the properties of an individual installer evidence record, these appear on the General tab.

Source table.property	Display property	Type	Max	Notes
DiscoveredInstalledPackages_ci.HostKey, InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci.HostKey, and SoftwareInstance_ci.HostKey	Not displayed. (p/key)	varchar	64	Identifies the inventory device on which the installer evidence was found. This value is not displayed in listings of, nor properties for, installer evidence (because in those contexts, the installer evidence may be relevant to many different devices). However, the link from the installer evidence to the application, plus this link to an individual device where the installer evidence has been found, allows the list of installed applications to appear on the Applications tab of the inventory device properties.
DiscoveredPackages_ ci.Package, InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci.Name, and SoftwareInstance_ci.Name	Name (p/key)	String	256	For recognition using the standard ARL to work reliably, this value must be the Display Name from Add/Remove Programs on Windows (or equivalent).
InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci.ProductCode	Not displayed.	String	110	The publisher's product code is not displayed in FlexNet Manager Suite.
DiscoveredPackages_ ci.Vendor, InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci.Vendor, and SoftwareInstance_ci.Publisher	Publisher (p/key)	String	200	For recognition using the standard ARL to work reliably, this value must be the Publisher from Add/Remove Programs on Windows (or equivalent).
ADDM (string literal)	Type	String	32	The string literal "ADDM" is supplied as the installer evidence type for this adapter.
DiscoveredPackages_ ci.Version, InstallerEvidenceDetail_ci.Version, and SoftwareInstance_ci.Version	Version (p/key)	String	72	For recognition using the standard ARL to work reliably, this value must be the Display Version from Add/Remove Programs on Windows (or equivalent).