What exactly does the Property ID Mapper needed for?

I’ve never turned it on or used it in our system, but we are being asked to turn it on for some queries directly to the database.

What exactly does this do, and will it impact our installation/size/performance?

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The PropertyID Mapper creates/updates the PROPERTYIDMAP table within the BFEnterprise/BFENT database. This table maps property names (retrieved properties, analysis properties, etc…) to their underlying id (siteid, analysisid, propertyid triplicate). As such, it makes it easier to query for specific property values/results from the database.

Please see the following links for additional reference:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/BESPropertyIDMapper

http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS2TKN_9.5.0/com.ibm.bigfix.doc/Platform/Installation/c_property_mapper.html

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I still don’t understand the value of running the Property ID Mapper. What am I going see differently in our Bigfix deployment? I have never run it, and I do not see any loss in functionality that I am aware of. The documentation says:

 This table maps retrieved property names to the SiteID, AnalysisID, PropertyID used to 
 reference properties in the QUESTIONRESULTS and LONGQUESTIONRESULTS tables.  

I don’t understand how this benefits the functionality of the system. If there is benefit why isn’t it built in? Why do I need to schedule a property ID Mapper task?

Fair question :slight_smile:

It is primarily meant to make queries directly against the BigFix database (which we don’t recommend for a number of reasons, but is certainly possible) a little bit easier…particularly where you are trying to reference BigFix Properties and their results.

Currently, BigFix property data of endpoints such as Computer Name, OS, IP Address, etc… are stored in the QUESTIONRESULTS and LONGQUESTIONRESULTS tables, but is done so in a way that is not easily query-able. In particular, we leverage a series of IDs (Site ID, Analysis ID, Property ID) to uniquely identify properties and their results for a given computerID in these tables. Knowing which series of IDs corresponds to a given BigFix property can be challenging. The Property ID Mapper creates/updates a table in the database that can be used as reference for this mapping to facilitate direct database queries.

Thanks Aram! That clears it up. I don’t need to perform this function since I do not generally query the DB directly, and never have for retrieve properties.

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