Hi all, I'm curious if anyone on this list is using the Dell Warranty API? https://techdirect.dell.com/portal/AboutAPIs.aspx
This is an API that gives access to the same kind of warranty information that can be found on the Dell support website at https://support.dell.com: you input a service tag, and you get back a machine's type, ship date, warranty status, expiration date, etc... We (used to) use it to maintain inventory of Dell equipment in our systems, get notifications about warranty expirations, and so on. Now, this API has been through various versions over a relatively short period of time (it's at v5 now), each revision being completely incompatible with the previous one and requiring complete rewrite of the tools interacting with it. Over the versions, it also looks like Dell has been increasingly worried about "security", as they went from an unauthenticated API, to a version that required an API key to be passed with each request (v4), an now to OAuth2 (v5) with tokens that expire after one hour... Again, this is to protect information that is publicly available on https://support.dell.com... Despite explaining to our Dell reps that this move could not be motivated by any real security consideration (the information is public), that it would not prevent sharing of API keys (which they seemed to be concerned about and cited as a reason to move to OAuth2) because a client_id and a client_secret can be shared as easily as an API key, and that it caused significant burden to customers while adding unnecessary complexity on both Dell's and the customers' end, they moved forward anyway. Because OAuth2 is the cool thing these days, no matter how relevant it is, I guess Dell seemed compelled to do it too. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was using that API (or used to use it), and what your approach was to what clearly appears a security theater. If you gave hell to your Dell reps about it, I'd love to hear it too, I'd feel less lonely. :) Thanks! -- Kilian _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge
