Starting with BigFix 7.0, you can extract data using the SOAP protocol from the BigFix Web Reports. The SOAP API provides an easy way and efficient way to pull data about computers, inventory information, security information, recent actions, etc. into other systems.

Benefits of SOAP API

  • Ease-of-Use: Building basic applications or integrations that use the BigFix SOAP API are simple to make either by using example code provided by BigFix or by using SOAP libraries provided by most programming languages. Additionally, the SOAP API uses HTTP/HTTPS to transmit data, which makes network communications simple and reliable.
  • Efficiency: The BigFix SOAP API connects directly to the BigFix Web Reports, which caches information locally, and so unlike database queries that will sometimes lock the database and cause performance problems, the SOAP API won't affect performance of the BigFix database.
  • Flexibility: Queries to the BigFix SOAP API use session relevance, which allows you to get results about any object in BigFix and allows for results in arbitrary formats.
  • And more: The SOAP protocol is well known for robustness and versatility and there is a wealth of information on the Internet to assist with using the SOAP protocol.

Example Uses of the SOAP API

  • Retrieve real-time BigFix data into company web portals and dashboards.
  • Integrate BigFix data into third-party and custom security tools.
  • Create interactive customized web pages that display specific information for security/operations users that don't need access to the BigFix Console or Web Reports.
  • Create customized applications to make common BigFix reports and information analysis easier.
  • And more... The BigFix SOAP API can be useful in any situation where you might want to see BigFix data outside of the BigFix Console or Web Reports.

Tools that use the SOAP API

  • The BigFix Excel Connector uses the SOAP API. You can test your session relevance queries for your project using the Excel Connector: https://www-304.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/ismlibrary/details?catalog.label=1TW10EP01
  • BFExtractToCSV tool pulls data from the SOAP API using a commandline interface and writes it to a csv file that can be imported into other tools. You can use the pre-defined queries to get information about your agents OR use the Excel Connector tool above to create custom session relevance queries and feed them into the BFExtractToCSV tool).

 

BigFix SOAP API Video

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To access the WSDL file that can be used to make the SOAP API call, you can access http://[webreportsurl]/webreports?wsdl for your BigFix 7.0+ Web Reports.

For more information, the Web Reports Guide mentioned in the video, with details on the SOAP Queries, is available here.