Patent ID: 7680907

Claim:
A system comprising: (A) one or more clients; (B) one or more databases; and (C) one or more servers, each of the one or more servers comprising: (i) a first server component that performs a plurality of functions comprising (a) receiving requests from at least one of the one or more clients for configuration file verification information; (b) storing in at least one of the one or more databases a log of the requests; (c) providing any updates to a configuration file; and (d) storing a log of provided updates in at least one of the one or more databases; and (ii) a second server component that is capable of performing a plurality of functions comprising (a) receiving one or more of software inventory information, hardware inventory information, and software metering statistics; and (b) storing one or more of the software inventory information, the hardware inventory information and the software metering statistics in at least one of the one or more databases; wherein one or more of the one or more clients each comprise an inventory agent that collects one or both of the hardware inventory information and the software inventory information in accordance with the configuration file, wherein code is extracted from the configuration file and injected into the inventory agent to enable collection of the inventory information, wherein the collected inventory information comprises inventory information that the inventory agent is not configured to collect at a time of implementation of the inventory agent.