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Dell PowerVault ME4 Series Storage System CLI Guide

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Using XML API output

The Management Controller provides access for monitoring and management using the SSH and Telnet protocols for command-line interface semantics, or using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols for XML API request/response semantics.

You can use an XML parser, such as XML::Parser in Perl, to process the XML output and store this information as objects.

The output of each CLI command is composed of valid XML data until the CLI prompt (typically #) is encountered. The output contains a valid XML header followed by the XML elements described in the following table.

Table 1. XML API elements
Element	Description and attributes
RESPONSE	The RESPONSE element is the top-level element, which contains all data output for the CLI command that was issued. The response includes: A number of OBJECT elements, which varies by command. A status object that provides a message and return code. A return code of 0 indicates that the command succeeded. Any other return code is an error code. There is only one RESPONSE element per issued command.
OBJECT	In general, an OBJECT element describes a storage-system component such as a disk or a volume. An object has these attributes: basetype: This attribute allows output in brief mode to be correlated with metadata to reduce the overhead of each command, as described in XML API optimization. This is also a good field to use to detect the type of the object (e.g., a disk, a volume, etc.). name: The name of the object. oid: The unique identifier for the object in the scope of the response. The OBJECT element can contain PROPERTY elements.
PROPERTY	A PROPERTY element provides detail about the attributes of an OBJECT. A property has these attributes: name: The unique name for the property within the object. key: Indicates whether this property is a key value to identify this object. type: The type of data represented by the element data. size: Typically the maximum size of the output. Usually only important if the console output is displayed in rows. draw: Whether to show or hide this data in console format. sort: The type of sorting that can be applied to this property. display-name: The label for this data to show in user interfaces.
COMP	A COMP (composition) element associates nested objects, such as a task object within a schedule object. A composition element has these attributes: P: The oid of the part component. G: The oid of the group component. An alternative to using COMP elements is described in XML API optimization.
ASC	The association element provides a simple association description between two objects in the response. A: First object. B: Second object.