There is a simple but exciting idea that I have been pondering for a few days.
Baselining utility. A tool that is run on a benchmark or baseline example system, along the lines of a system snapshot, that would generate a baseline in the console. The baseline would be based on what is and is not relevant on the example machine. Tool could be run on the target machine directly or could be a console side/query based tool.
example: the tool scans for all QFEs applied to the system and adds the fixlets that meet parent relevance for the example system to the baseline.
example: the tool outputs a list of all fixlets that meet parent relevance for the baseline system with a tree structure by site allowing entire branches or individual items be added to the resultant baseline. The tree has color coding to indicate which of the items were never relevant, were relevant but patches and are still relevant.
Very roughly, the tool would scan an individual system and “make more of these”.
This was more of a brainstorming effort rather than having a specific need I am trying to fill.
I think both of the suggestions you put forth are food for thought
and could be very useful. The question that I had in mind was:
If I had an unpatched machine that was identical to my example machine in OS and installed software, what fixlets would have to be applied to get it to match the patch level of my example machine? Provide that result as a baseline for easy distribution or further editing.
It might look something like
(names of fixlets whose (parent relevance of it = true AND overall relevance of it = false) of “example computer”) as baseline
How about a wizard where you select a machine (or maybe several) and it creates a baseline out of all Fixlets that have been applied to the machine(s)?
Or conversely, it creates a baseline out of all Relevant Fixlets on the machine(s), giving you the opportunity to select the source Sites and then to exclude individual Fixlets?
So basically, make a baseline from all the Fixlets that are relevant on the unpatched machine that are not relevant on the patched machine…
here’s a bit of relevance to calculate this. The relevance can be made more efficent but I left it this way to make it easy to read:
ids of relevant fixlets whose (name of site of it = “Enterprise Security” AND not (relevant (it, bes computer whose (name of it = “XPITUNES”))))of bes computer whose (name of it = “DELL2100”)
All that’s left is to embed it into a wizard. I’d probably just make the wizard produce a link to the list of Fixlets. You would then just select them and right click to make a baseline out of it.
This wizard/tools sounds good , but I’d settle for simply right clicking fixlets and make a baseline out of them. Or a “view as basline” option to create an ad-hoc basline much like you can do with computer groups.
The right-click Fixlet “add to baseline” feature is implemented in BES 7.0. I was just playing with it and it is much more convenient and I think everyone who uses baselines will enjoy it.