Mapping an External Feed

Learn how to map an external feed to send Guardium report data directly to an external database.

Before you begin

Verify the following prerequisites before mapping an external feed:

Identify the external database that will receive data from the feed, and gather the connection information required for that database (ip address, port number, username, password, etc.). External feeds currently support relational databases and may not function with other database types.
Identify the Guardium report that will provide data to the external feed.

About this task

External feeds allow you to send Guardium report information directly to an external database. Anything that can be defined in a report can be sent via an external feed. These feeds depend on mapping DOMAIN_ID and ATTRIBUTE_ID from Guardium's reporting mechanism to table fields on the external database. Each mapping consists of the records in four tables (EF_MAP_TYPE_HDR, EF_MAP_TABLE, EF_MAP_COLUMN, and EF_MAP_GDM_TYPE). Use the grdapi_create_ef_mapping function to help create these tables and establish the mapping.

Procedure

Generate a report with the data you would like to transfer using an external feed. You can do this from a central manager, aggregator, or stand-alone Guardium instance, provided that system can access the report data you require.
From the CLI, run grdapi create_ef_mapping reportName="My report". In addition to establishing the mapping, the grdapi_create_ef_mapping function also generates a sample create table statement to be used in subsequent steps.
On the Guardium system where your report is defined, search /var/log/guard for a filename like ef_sample_[my_report].sql. This file contains the example create table statements. You must modify the statements in this file to match the requirements of your external database. After modifying the file, run the statements against your external database to create the target tables.
The external feed should now be available for use in workflow processes defined through the audit process builder. See the Optional External Feed documentation for additional information.