Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Parsing the XML Reports
In its current version, MBSA provides one XML report for every scanned computer. Manually wading through these files can be burdensome. Fortunately, because MBSA saves these reports in XML, you can open them in an XML-aware application or create a script to parse through the files and extract specific data. For example, you can use Windows Script Host's (WSH's) FileSystemObject to loop through each file in the folder that contains your reports. For each file, use the XML Document Object Model (DOM) to load the XML document. Then, loop through and display only those elements that match a part of the report that interests you.

Although the reports are sometimes long, they're broken into hierarchical elements, so interpreting them is logical and straightforward. The <Check> node, which contains the report data for a particular test, includes an ID attribute that defines that test. The <Check> node might be located directly under the root node or beneath the <SQLInstance> node. For example, <Check ID="115" ...> corresponds to Windows security updates and <Check ID="10212" ...> corresponds to SQL Server security updates. Web Table 1 lists all the tests that MBSA performs. Expanding a node provides a particular test's detailed results, which you can further parse for a specific update. For great XML primers that include sample code, visit the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) library. (A good place to begin is the "XML DOM User Guide" at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/enus/xmlsdk30/htm/xmconxmldomuserguide.asp. The document provides an example of loading an XML document but requires a bit of Windows scripting knowledge.) . . .