[Oval-devel] Description field in generated definitions

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 01:13:57PM +0500, Pavel Vinogradov wrote:
> But where i can get information for original description section? In data
> file i don't have such, in wml file can't  mark out proper data. Can 
> anybody suggest where get content for this field?

The information is in the wml file. Typically the advisories are structure as
follows:

- a description text
- hyperlinks to CVE references
- generic text saying "For the distribution XXX do YYY"

Actually the WML files are generated from the mails with the advisories using
the parse-advisory.pl script you will see at the website CVS.

If you find it difficult to parse it in the wml data maybe the mails with the
advisories (available at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/debian-security-announce/)
might be easier for you. If you want to analyse this I can also provide an
mbox with a sample of all the advisories and a sample script I developed a
long time ago to put all the information into a SQL database.

This last thing, BTW, can be useful for the "extraction mechanism" for the
server too...

Regards

Javier