SWA Capabilities

SWA's major functions are briefly outlined below.

Analyze

SWA runs as a client-side patch and security analysis tool. An HP-supplied catalog file with known problems and fixes is downloaded from the HP IT Resource Center (ITRC) and compared to the software installed on the system. Depots used for full-system installation, such as the installation depot on an OE DVD, may also be analyzed.

Systems are analyzed for patch warnings, critical defects, security bulletins, missing Quality Pack (QPK) patch bundles, and user-specified patches and supersession chains.

SWA optimizes the automatic selection of patch dependencies by assessing the quality of the dependency, providing the best case scenario for the dependency, minimizing changes to the system, and assessing future patch dependency changes.

Report

SWA is able to generate a variety of reports based on its analysis. Action, Issue, and Detail reports are available. A consolidated HTML report with links to the technical knowledge base is always created. SWA provides a report used when downloading software from HP, and also reports actions that need to be taken manually.

Download Software from HP

Based on the analysis, SWA obtains patches from HP and creates a Software Distributor (SD) depot of software for installation.

SWA automatically uses MD5 cryptographic hash to verify patch integrity before unpacking downloaded patches.