Multiple Applications or single Application?

On login, depending on the number of Applications available, behavior is slightly different:

Number of ApplicationsBehavior
Single Application

You are taken direct to the Application landing page:

In versions ≥ 2.11.0, outdated tiles (Data Safety, SQL Injection, XSS Command Injection, Misconfiguration) have been replaced with the updated tiles (CISQ-ISO 5055, CWE Top 25 2011-CWE Top 25 2022, OWASP 2017-OWASP 2021), and a new tile - PCI-DSS-V3.2.1 is added.

Newly added tiles are based on Industry Standards.

Multiple Applications

You are offered a choice of which Application to access:

When the Application is selected, you will be taken direct to the selected Application's landing page (as shown above). If you are not authorized to access the selected Application, a "You are not authorized to access any applications" message will be displayed.

If you would like to choose different Application, you can do so using the dropdown list box located on the menu bar:

If you cannot locate the Application you require, you can use the search field to search for the Application - the search is instant - entering a single character will start the search mechanism:

Whenever relevant, loading icons will display when data could take some time to fetch/process and/or display.

This software is subject to a limited access message

If, on login, you are presented with the following message on each page in the Security Dashboard, you should contact your CAST Administrator to request that the license is updated:

There are too many authorized users to connect to your Security Dashboard.
To avoid this limitation, you can contact your CAST Project Manager to update your licensing terms and conditions.

You can click the link on the "CAST Project Manager" text o contact the administrator. Doing so will open an email in your default email client requesting that the license is updated.

Security Dashboard interface

This section provides a brief explanation of the interface display options that are available to you.

Note that the tiles displayed out of the box are fully configurable by the CAST AI Administrator.

Application landing page or home page

The Application landing or "home" page is displayed after a successful login:

It consists of multiple tiles used to display data and information from the most recent snapshot of the selected Application:

Risk Model tile

This default tile displays "at a glance" information about the current Application status:

  • the number of Violations or Critical Violations in the Application (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))
  • the number of Rules in the Application that have been triggered during an analysis/snapshot (this figure includes default CAST AIP Rules and also custom rules with IDs above 1,000,000)
  • the number of Critical Rules in the Application that have been triggered during an analysis/snapshot
  • clicking this tile will take you directly to the Risk investigation view (this can also be accessed by clicking the  button available in the sidebar).

Tag specific tiles 

All these tiles require that the extension "Quality Standards Mapping" is installed BEFORE a snapshot is generated. In addition, some tiles ALSO require the Security Standards extension (particularly for more modern standards).

Security standard tag filter is applicable for quality rules table and not for technical criteria table. So the displayed violation numbers in Security tag tile will match only with the quality rules table.

To filter the technical criteria table user can select desired assessment model from the "Assessment model” drop-down.

In versions ≥ 2.11.0, Tag specific tiles are not available.

Various additional tiles are displayed as follows:

  • these display the number of Violations or Critical Violations in the Application for all the rules that are tagged with a specific tag (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))
  • Clicking on any of these tiles navigates to the Risk investigation view (this can also be accessed by clicking the  button available in the sidebar) with the specific tag selected at the top of the table - therefore filtering and displaying only rules that have this tag. "All Rules" will be selected in the Technical Criteria table and the list of rules displayed in the right hand panel are those that correspond to the selected tag.

No applicable rules

When no rules belonging to the selected tag have been triggered, the tile displays "No applicable rules":

Critical Violations / Violations

Enabling / disabling the Critical Violations filter will effect the violation count displayed in these tiles:

In versions ≥ 2.11.0, enabling/disabling the violation filter will affect the violation count displayed in the following tile:

Technologies Overview tile

  • the total number of Violations or Critical Violations in the current Application per specific technology - in other words, the total number of times a Rule or Critical Rule has been violated by an object in the Application for that specific technology (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))
  • Clicking this tile will take you directly to the Risk investigation view with the corresponding technology highlighted in the technology drop down (this can also be accessed by clicking the  button available in the sidebar).
  • Drill down click option is disabled if the tile displays "N/A" Violations/Critical Violations.

Risk Introduced tile

By default, this tile shows two values for the Security Health Measure:

  • Added Critical Violations or Violations > The number of critical violations or violations (i.e. "risk") introduced in the current snapshot
  • Removed Critical Violations or Violations > The number of critical violations or violations removed from the current snapshot

Values are a comparison between the previous and current snapshot, therefore if this is the first snapshot then there will be Added Critical Violations or Violations but no Removed Critical Violations or Violations.

Note that depending on whether Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations), the content will reflect the filter that is currently active, displaying only Critical Violations or ALL Violations accordingly.

Behaviour when the tile is clicked

Clicking the tile will take you directly to the Health Measure in the Risk Investigation view (see Security Dashboard - GUI for more information), however, the Risk Investigation view will only show added and removed violation information. Any Health Measure, Technical Criterion or Rule where the number of Added and/or Removed violations is 0, will not be visible. A message will reflect this:

ISO-5055 Tile

The ISO-5055 extension is supported with full functionality. The ISO-5055 tile has been added to automatically display ISO-5055 data, with full drill down capability.

Drilling down through this tile will take you to the Risk Investigation view, where the focus will be set to the ISO-5055 Assessment Model (1) showing only the ISO-5055 metrics (2):

All industry standard tiles (ISO-5055, CISQ, OWASP and MIPS) will display non-critical violation counts by default: they are not impacted by the critical violation switch.

Configuring Assessment Model drop-down

In versions ≥ 2.11.0user can add new industry standards to the assessment model drop-down by configuring ed.json file.

Application Components tile

This default tile displays "at a glance" information about the Violation status for the current Application:

  • the number of Modules present in the Application (Modules can be configured during an analysis to divide the Application into meaningful groups)
  • the number of Lines of Code present in the Application
  • the total number of Objects in the current Application that contain at least one violation (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))
  • the total number of Violations or Critical Violations in the current Application - in other words, the total number of times a Rule or Critical Rule has been violated by an object in the Application (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))
  • the total number of Rules that have been violated in the current Application (the display depends on whether only Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations))

Clicking this tile will take you directly to the Application investigation view (this can also be accessed by clicking the  button available in the sidebar).

Top Riskiest Transactions tile

A "Top Riskiest Transactions tile" is provided "out-of-the-box" for the Security Health Measure:

This tile provides a clickable "cloud" of transaction names  - the larger and bolder the font used to display the transaction name, the higher the TRI value (TRI or Transaction Risk Index is an indicator of the risk for transaction) has within the Security Health Measure.

Clicking a transaction name in the tile will take you directly to the parent Health Measure in the Transaction Investigation view (this can also be accessed by clicking the  button available in the sidebar):

Click to enlarge


Top Riskiest Components tiles

A "Top Riskiest Components tile" is provided "out-of-the-box" for the Security Health Measure:

This tile provides a clickable "cloud" of object names  - the larger and bolder the font used to display the name, the higher the Risk (previously known as PRI: Propagated Risk Index) value the object has within the Security Health Measure. See this table for more information about how Risk is calculated.

Clicking an object name in the tile will take you directly to the object in the Application Investigation view - for example clicking the MFJDEMUT object will show this (click to enlarge):

Top Modules with Violations or Critical Violations tile

One "Top Modules with Violations" tile is provided "out-of-the-box" for the Security Health Measure:

This tile provides a listing of the modules sorted by the number of violations / critical violations present in each module. Tile can be resized to display more or less modules. Clicking a module in the tile will take you directly to the module in the Application Investigation view. In the Application Investigation view, violated Rules are listed by their number of violations, with critical rules first (by default: ordered by number of violations):

Note that depending on whether Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations), the content will reflect the filter that is currently active, displaying only Critical Violations or ALL Violations accordingly.

Security Health Measure weakness/strength tiles

Two tiles listing the Strength and Weakness of the Security Health Measure, listed by Technical Criteria:

Note that depending on whether Critical Violations or ALL Violations are being displayed (see Data Filtering on Critical Violations), the content will reflect the filter that is currently active, displaying only Critical Violations or ALL Violations accordingly.

These tiles provide

  • Strengths: Items displayed at the Technical Criteria that do not have any critical violations (this includes Technical Criteria that have no critical Rules or Technical Criteria that have critical rules with no violations).
  • Weaknesses: Items displayed are the Technical Criteria considered to have at least one critical violation. The Technical Criteria are sorted from worst (top) to least bad (bottom).

Clicking a Technical Criterion in the tile will take you directly to the Technical Criterion in the Risk Investigation view:

Top Rules with increasing violations

A "Top Rules with increasing violations" tile is provided "out-of-the-box" for the Secure Coding - Input Validation technical criterion:

These tiles displays Top Rules with increasing violations: the value represents the difference (increase) in the number of violations for the Rule between the most recent and the previous snapshot. The higher the value, the larger the difference, i.e. those Rules listed at the top of the list have MORE violations since the previous snapshot.

Violation count difference is displayed on the right of a rule and a red dot is added when the rule is critical. Rules are clickable and will take you direct to the Rule in the Risk Investigation view.

Note that the default behaviour in the dashboard is to display ONLY Critical Violations (see Data filtering on Critical Violations) - therefore the display in this tile will reflect this and only Critical Violations (with a red dot) will be displayed. If the default filter is disabled to show ALL violations, then the tile will display Critical and non-Critical Violations.

Action Plan tile

A default Action Plan tile is displayed showing, initially, the total number of objects that have been added to the Action Plan list since the last snapshot was generated. Clicking the tile will take you directly to the Action Plan).

This tile can be manually re-sized (drag and drop the corners or sides of the tile) to include more information about Pending and Solved items (see the Action Plan for more information about the Pending and Solved statistics):

Exclusions tile

A default Exclusions tile is displayed showing:

  • Active Exclusions > Shows the number of violations that have been added to the Exclusion list and a subsequent snapshot has been generated (therefore the violations are not part of the results of the current snapshot) - i.e. they are actively excluded.
  • Scheduled Exclusions > Shows the number violations that have been added to the Exclusion list and no snapshot has yet been generated (therefore the violations still form part of the results of the current snapshot). When a snapshot is generated, exclusions in this list will move to the Active Exclusions list.

Clicking the tile will take you to the relevant Exclusion page, see Security Dashboard - Exclusions for more information.

Default tile:

Small size:

Continuous Improvement tile

A "Continuous Improvement" tile is available out of the box:

  • This tile shows the following information:
    • Removed Violations in the current snapshot
    • Added Violations in the current snapshot
  • No data is shown when a previous snapshot is activated.
  • Clicking the tile will take you direct to the Improvement tab, which is part of Continuous Improvement.

Configuring the landing or home page

As explained previously the landing page or home page contains a set number of "default" tiles that are delivered "out of the box". Your dashboard Administrator may chose to configure additional tiles or custom locations for the default set of tiles but you have a certain amount of freedom to set up the home page as you require:

  • All tiles (custom and default) can be moved by dragging and dropping to the new location.
  • Some tiles can be resized larger or smaller by dragging and dropping the bottom right hand corner of the tile. When tiles are configured (whether custom or default), they contain information that specifies their maximum and minimum size on the horizontal and vertical axes - i.e. you may find that certain tiles will not resize as you wish - this is by design.

Saving changes

Changes you make to the location or size of tiles is saved via a cookie, therefore the positions and sizes of tiles will be retained over successive sessions using the same browser. Using a different browser on the same workstation will not retain the changes to the tiles.

Resetting the home page

If you would like to reset the position and size of the tiles as they are provided to you "out of the box", you can use the Reset homepage option located in the top right hand corner:

Adding tiles as bookmarks/favorites

If you would like to monitor a specific Rule (perhaps a critical Rule with multiple violations) in your Application via a tile in the landing/home page you can do so by adding a "bookmark" or "favorite" tile which links to the item in question. To do so:

  • Navigate to the item you would like to monitor. In this example we have a chosen a critical Rule that has a high number of violations.
  • Ensure the item is selected, then click the star icon (highlighted below) to add the item as a bookmark or favorite on the landing/homepage:

  • A message will inform you that the tile has been added:

  • The tile will now be visible in the landing/home page. The number of violations will be displayed, whether the rule is critical and, where applicable, an evolution percentage will be displayed which represents how the number of violations for the Rule has evolved between the current and previous snapshots:

Tips:

  • It is only possible to create a bookmark/favorite for a Rule. Any other type of item (Business Criteria, Technical Criteria, Distribution and Measure) are excluded from this feature.
  • Bookmark/favorite tiles are easily recognisable in that they feature a star icon in their upper right corner.
  • These tiles can be resized and moved just like any other custom/default tile.
  • You can remove the tile by rolling your mouse over the star icon in the upper right corner of the tile - it will transform into a cross and remove the tile when clicked. A message will inform you that the tile has been removed.
  • Bookmark/favorite tiles are persistent between browser sessions, but are specific to the browser. In other words, bookmark/favorite tiles are only visible in the browser they were created in (provided the browser cache/cookies have not been emptied since the tile was created).

Changing tile colors

Each tile displayed in the landing or home page will be configured with a predefined colour. However, you can change this from your browser:

  • Click the cog icon in the top right hand corner of any tile and choose the colour you require.

  • The updated color of the tile is stored in the browser cache, therefore:
    • the tile chosen color will be retained until the cache is emptied.
    • the chosen color is specific to the browser, therefore other dashboard users will not see the new color
  • Resetting the homepage will reset the tile color to the default.

Changing the dashboard language display

By default, the Security Dashboard is delivered with language display set to English: all messages and text displayed in the dashboard is only displayed in English. However, it is possible to choose a specific language locale and provided that a translation of the default English text and messages has been configured (see Dashboard localization in the CAST AIP documentation), the dashboard will then display text and messages in the chosen language. To do so, click the user menu drop down and select the the Change Language option:

A popup window will then enable you to select the required language - choose the language and click Change:


The dashboard will then reset and text items will be displayed in the chosen language.

Note that:

  • changes are browser specific and are stored in the cache. Therefore if the cache is emptied, the language will reset to the default. See Dashboard localization in the CAST AIP documentation.
  • only those languages that are defined for use will be available in the drop down.

Top menu bar

A description of each numbered item is provided below:

ItemNameDescription
1Application selectorThis option enables you to select the Application you wish to view. A drop down list box will be displayed enabling you to pick the Application you require. Note that only the Applications you are authorized to view will be available for selection.
2Snapshot descriptionDisplays information about the current snapshot data you are viewing: Name, Version, Date.
3Snapshot selector

This option enables you to select a specific snapshot to investigate - if multiple snapshots are available for the current Application. This allows you to "go back in time" and investigate data from a previous snapshot. Note that not all data is available for previous snapshots. See snapshots for more information.

4Share data

Clicking this icon will open a new email in your default email client, together with a link to the current location in the dashboard. You can therefore use option to share a link with colleagues. Example email shown below:

Hi, I want to share with you my Security Dashboard. You can access it by clicking this url :
http://server:8080/CAST-Engineering/engineering/index.html#ADG/applications/101/snapshots/2/business/60017/qualityInvestigation/60013.
Regards.
5Data filteringThis icon activates/deactivates data filtering on Critical Violations. By default, only Critical Violations are displayed. See Data filtering on Critical Violations for more information.
6Search (basic)

Activates a basic search field enabling you to search for names of items in the Assessment Model:

  • Search results will include items dependent on the location in which you made the search.
  • Search is not contextual and is instead global to the entire current snapshot
  • search functions in "contain" mode, i.e. search results must contain text matching the search query term
  • the number of results is displayed
  • the list of results for object searches contains the following information: object name page, object type and object fullname
  • results are paginated, scroll with the scroll bar to view more results
  • clicking an item in the search results will drilldown to the exact location of the item in the dashboard

A search made in Home page, Risk Investigation view, Transaction investigation view and Action/Exclusion lists will give results for the following items:

  • Business Criteria
  • Technical Criteria
  • Rules
  • Measures
  • Distributions

A search made in Application investigation view will give results for the following items:

  • Objects

  • The Search feature uses the open source Lucene search software
  • It relies on the existence of an index which is generated automatically when the application server is started.
  • You can find out more in Managing the Search index (from the CAST AIP documentation).
  • An Advanced Search feature is also available that allows you to search for an object name based on a list of violations. See Advanced Search for more information.
7Current user

Indicates the name of the current user that is logged in to the Security Dashboard. A drop down list box is also available:

This contains the following options:

Side menu bar

Side menuItemNameDescription

1HomeThis button will take you back to the initial "home" or landing page from wherever you are located in the Security Dashboard.
2Risk Investigation viewThis option focuses on application risk level from the Assessment Model perspective - moving through Business Criteria, Technical Criteria, Rules/Measures/Distributions right down to the objects in violation.
3Application Investigation view

This option focuses on the application's technical components (i.e. its objects) and provides violation details on those objects and their related dependencies.

4Transaction Investigation viewThis option focuses on the application's transactions and provides violation details on the riskiest transactions and their related dependencies.
5Advanced searchThis option allows you to search for an object name based on a list of violations. Filters can be enabled to limit the search scope.
6Education / Continuous Improvement

This option provides access to the Education / Continuous Improvement features. By default, the focus will be on the Education feature.

7Actions / ExclusionsThis option provides access to the Actions  / Exclusions features. By default, the focus will be on the Action Plan feature.
8Report GenerationProvides access to the Report Generation feature.
9Contextual help

This option provides basic help for various items in the Security Dashboard. To use it:

  • Click the button in the sidebar (1) - the button will transform into a cross inside a circle
  • Any contextual help that has been configured on the current page will be highlighted with a plus sign in a blue circle (2)


  • Click the plus sign in a blue circle to view the contextual help:

  • To exit the contextual help, first click the cross in the upper left corner of the contextual help explanation to close the explanation, then click the contextual help button in the sidebar menu.

What information is available?

Note that the Security Dashboard features a server cache to improve the speed of data display. This does mean, however, that very recent changes in data (i.e. a new snapshot generation) may not instantly appear in the dashboard. If this is the case, the server cache needs to be manually reloaded. See Reload the cache (from the CAST AIP documentation).

The information displayed in the Security Dashboard is derived from snapshots generated by the CAST AI Administrator and provides a detailed "engineering" level view of your set of Applications - this includes specific information about Rules and Violations.

Snapshots

All data that is displayed is taken from the most recent snapshot that has been generated for the selected Application. However, it is possible to view data from a previous snapshot if required by using the snapshot selector in the top menu:

Clicking this option will display a drop down menu where you can select the snapshot you require:

To view a previous snapshot, select it on the timeline and then click the Select Snapshot option:

The display will then update to show the data from the selected snapshot.

Note that when viewing data from a previous snapshot, some information/tiles are not available:

  • Action Plan - the Action Plan is available in the previous snapshot, however, the ability to change the action plan (add/edit violations) is only available from the most recent snapshot.
  • Education is not available
  • Application Investigation is not available (data not historized in database)
  • Source Code is not available
  • Some tiles refer to data that is not available in a previous snapshot. In this case, inactive tiles are still displayed using faded colours and contain a short text explaining the issue. The following tiles are not available:
    • Application Components
    • Top Modules with Critical Violations
    • Top Riskiest Components

Returning to current snapshot

To return to the current snapshot data use the snapshot selector button on the top menu bar to select the most recent snapshot:

Data filtering on Critical Violations

By default, the Security Dashboard only shows information about Critical Violations, rather than showing data for ALL violations - this allows you to instantly see the most important flaws in the analyzed application.This data filter is controlled by the following icon in the Top Menu bar:

When in the default position showing only information about Critical Violations, the icon is colored red as shown above. When in this position, the dashboard only shows information about Critical Violations and other non-Critical Violations are ignored. For example, the Risk Model tile will display data only about Critical Violations (as specified in the black circle):

Note that:

  • all tiles and views in the dashboard are impacted by the data filter and will update their display accordingly. Only the following components are unaffected:
    • Action Plan / Exclusion tiles
    • Top Riskiest Components tile
    • Top Riskiest Transactions tile
  • if you use a fixed URL (for example a bookmark) to access data such as a violations of a non critical Rule, then a message will be displayed to inform you that the filter has been temporarily disabled:

  • if you reset the homepage (see Configuring the landing or home page for more information about this option.) then the filter will return to its default setting showing only Critical Violations.

Disabling filtering on Critical Violations

If you would prefer to view all data about ALL Violations (not just Critical Violations) in your application, you can disable the filter by clicking the filter icon on the top menu:

Once the filter is disabled, ALL data is now displayed. For example the Risk Model tile now displays data about ALL violations:

Data display

The data available is displayed using various different "views":

  • Risk Investigation
  • Application Investigation
  • Transaction Investigation

Action Plan/Exclusion list/Education list/Continuous Improvement

The Security Dashboard features the ability:

  • to add and remove objects (violations) to and from an "Action Plan" - an Action Plan is simply a list of objects (i.e. "violations") that have been selected for action in the next snapshot generation process with a priority level assigned to them. Users can then use the list to focus their re-mediation work. Think of it as a "to do list" - i.e. objects that require work to remove the violation flagged by CAST AIP.
  • to Exclude objects from a future snapshot - this can be useful when the object is violating an AIP Rule, but is irrelevant or is a false positive.
  • to add and remove Rules to and from an "Education" list to promote best practices.
  • to view detailed information about rules that have been added to the Education list in the Continuous Improvement feature.

See:

Report Generation

The Report Generation feature allows you to generate reports on the fly direct from the CAST Security Dashboard interface. Various reports can be generated, however, some require some configuration before they will work. See Security Dashboard - Report Generation for more information:


Advanced Search

Accessing the Advanced Search feature

The Advanced Search feature can be accessed using the icon in the left hand menu:

Enabling the Advanced Search feature

"Out of the box", the Advanced Search feature is not enabled and the following message will be displayed:

This indicates that a "violations index" (on which the feature relies) has not yet been generated. To generate the index the following methods are available:

Using the "Diagnostic" GUI


This method requires that the user has the ADMIN role.

Use the following URL to access the Diagnostic page:

http://<server>:<port>/<dashboard>/static/diagnostic.html

This provides an indication of the violations index status based on the "domain":

  • N/A - the domain is mapped to a Measurement Service schema or the Dashboard Service schema was installed with CAST AIP < 8.3.3)
  • toCreate - no index has ever been created for this domain
  • toUpdate - an index exists for this domain, but it is outdated because a new snapshot has been computed since the index creation
  • upToDate - an index exists and is up-to-date. When this status is shown, the index for the Advanced Search feature is ready and available.

In the following example the index has never been generated since the status is set to "toCreate":

Click to enlarge

To generate the index, click the Create/Update Index button. During generation the status "Indexing" will be displayed and on completion, the status will change to "upToDate":

Click to enlarge

Using the RestAPI

This method requires that the user has the ADMIN role.

Use the RestAPI client:

http://<server>:<port>/<dashboard>/static/default.html

Using the following URI with a PUT will generate the index (where <domain> is more than likely set to AED, unless you have custom domains):

<domain>/violations-index

Then use the same URI with a GET will show the index status:

Generating the index when the web application starts

This method will force the violations index to be generated if its status is toUpdate (i.e. the index exists but is out-of-date because a new snapshot has been computed since the index creation) every time the web application is started, i.e.:

  • When the web application host (e.g. Apache Tomcat) starts up or restarts
  • When the web application is restarted through the Apache Tomcat management console
CAST only recommends using this option if your Dashboard Service schema is small - since the index is generated during web application startup, this can impact performance.

Edit the following file with a text editor:

%CATALINA_HOME%\webapps\<dashboard>\WEB-INF\web.xml

Set the following configuration to true:

<context-param>
<param-name>rebuildViolationsSearchIndexesOnStart</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

Save the file. Next time the web application is started the index will be generated.

Using a custom batch file

This method requires that the user has the ADMIN role.

This method is to be used when you have a configuration in the domains.properties file - i.e. multiple "domains". The custom batch will generate the violations index for all the domains configured in the domains.properties file.

Create the following batch files in the %CATALINA_HOME%\webapps\<dashboard>\WEB-INF folder an then run the launch.bat file to start the index generation:

launch.bat
@echo off
@echo Computing Violations Indexes ...

util.bat > util.log
@echo --------------------------------
util.bat
@echo off
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
@echo Automated Violations Indexes Creation
@echo -------------------------------------

for /F "delims== eol=#" %%D in (domains.properties) do (
@echo Process %%D/violations-index
start /B titi.bat %%D
@echo.
)

In the following file (titi.bat), you need to modify the line starting curl to match your environment:

titi.bat
@echo off
prompt $_
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set "domain=%~1"

@echo Start %domain% !DATE!_!TIME!
curl -s -u user:pwd -X PUT http://localhost:8080/<dashboard>/rest/%domain%/violations-index
@echo is the response from %domain%
@echo Finish %domain% !DATE!_!TIME!
Note that following the generation of a new snapshot, the violations index status will change to toUpdate, therefore CAST recommends regenerating the index to take into account the data available in the new snapshot.

Using the Advanced Search feature

When the feature is accessed and the violations index has been generated, the following will be displayed:

Left hand panelThe left hand panel provides a set of filters that can be used to narrow down the search cope. Filters are explained in XXXX.
Right hand panel

The right hand panel list the results of the search. Key points:

  • with no search criteria or filters enabled will show all violations available in the currently selected snapshot indicated by the following text:

  • a search field is available for you to enter the object name you are searching for. Results in will be updated in real time.

  • you can download the results to an Excel file for portability requirements:

  • 20 results are shown. Use the Show More button to display additional results:

  • the result lists uses the following columns:
Option to add/remove the violation from the Action Plan or the Scheduled Exclusion List. Note that to interact with the Action Plan/Scheduled List, your user login must have the role QUALITY_MANAGER/EXCLUSION_MANAGER roles. These can be assigned at user level (when using Default Authentication mode) or via user or group (when using Standard LDAP authentication).
Action / Exclusions

Indicates whether the violation has been added to the Action Plan or the Scheduled Exclusion List:

Item has been added to the Action Plan.
Item has been added to the Scheduled Exclusion List.
Object Name LocationDisplays the object name, and in the case of file based objects (as oppose to Database objects), the location on disk of the object.
Status

Displays the status of the object in comparison to the previous snapshot - e.g.:

  • Added
  • Updated
  • Deleted
  • Unchanged
Clicking this icon will take you direct to the object in the Application Investigation view.

Using filters for the Advanced Search

The filters available in the left hand panel enable the search scope to be limited. The following filters can be enabled by expanding the section and selecting with a tick:

Criteria or Rules

Restrict the scope via a Health Measure, Technical Criterion or Rule (or a combination).

Displayed results are union of selected Criteria results, with duplicate violations omitted. Sorting is disabled on this section.

Weight

Restrict the scope via the weight of the rule in its parent Technical Criterion.

Criticality

Restrict the scope via the criticality of the rule (Critical or Non Critical).
Violation Status

Restrict the scope to the violation status in the current snapshot: Added, Updated, Unchanged.

Displayed results are an OR of selected violation status results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Technologies ,Transactions , Critical ,Module) with duplicate violations omitted. Violation status remains selected even after navigating to other views and coming back to Advanced search.

Transactions

Restrict the scope to objects that are classed as transactions.

Technologies

Restrict the scope to the technologies that are present in the current snapshot.

Displayed results are an OR of selected technologies results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Modules ,Transactions , Critical ,Violation status) with duplicate violations omitted.

Modules

Restrict the scope to a module in the current snapshot.

Displayed results are an OR of selected module results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Technologies ,Transactions , Critical ,Violation status) with duplicate violations omitted. Module remains selected even after navigating to other views and coming back to Advanced search.


Note that an indicator will show how many filters have been selected:

Exporting data to Microsoft Excel file format

You can export data to an Excel file format if required. To export to Microsoft Excel file format, use the following icon which is available at the following levels:

  • Quality Investigation
    • Health Measures
    • Business Criteria
    • Technical Criteria
    • Rules, Distributions and Measures
    • Violations
  • Application Investigation, Transaction Investigation
    • Violations
  • Action Plan
  • Scheduled and Active Exclusions

When you click this icon, depending on your browser you will be prompted whether you would like to Save or Open the Excel file. The Excel file will contain the data you requested in column format:

Notes about the Excel file data:

  • Some information such as rule criticity or weight are not available.

  • Variation between snapshots as a percentage is not provided, but scores for both current and previous snapshot are provided.

  • Where a cell is blank this typically means that either the data is common to all modules (blank Module Name cell) or there are multiple Technologies (blank Technology cell).

Violation level export - Associated Value data

When you export to Excel from the Violation level, a column containing a Rule's Associated Value may also be available in the resulting Excel file - in the example below, "JSP Page name" is the Associated Value for the Rule "Action Artifacts should not directly call a JSP page":

The Associated Value refers to a specific output for the Rule in question. For the Rule shown above "Action Artifacts should not directly call a JSP page", the Associated Value is defined as the JSP Page name - in other words, for this Rule, the JSP file listed in the column highlighted above violates the Rule in question. You can view the Associated Value configuration in the CAST Management Studio by opening the Assessment Model and locating the Rule: