Prerequisites

Availability (Without Installation)

The Business Importer is available as a standard part of product installation. It is installed on each inventory beacon, along with the Business Adapter Studio. The default location on each inventory beacon for the Business Importer executable is C:\Program Files\Flexera Software\Inventory Beacon\DotNet\bin\MGSBI.exe.

Because Business Importer is installed as standard, it does not require additional specific installation tasks.

The complete Business Importer consists of:

• The executable, called MGSBI.exe. (See Command Line for Business Importer.)
• A set of template XML files for you to modify as required.

Connections and Drivers

Connections can be considered in two directions:

• 'Downstream' from the Business Importer to the original data sources
• 'Upstream' from the Business Importer as it uploads the collected data to the central application server for IT Asset Management.

Downstream, it's obvious that the Business Importer requires connections to the source data it is to collect. Depending on the data source used, additional drivers may be required. For instance, if data is read from Oracle databases, the Oracle OLE-DB driver (delivered by Oracle as part of the Oracle client) must be present .

In contrast there are no special requirements needed 'upstream'. Since the Business Importer is running on an inventory beacon and cannot access the central compliance database, no drivers are required. When it is executed by the Business Adapter Studio, the Business Importer writes the collected data to a special staging file on the inventory beacon, where other automated processes upload it to the central application server, and subsequently import it into the compliance database.