This is the first of a series of quick-tip type posts on Metacoda Plug-ins. Most of my previous posts have been relatively long (and less frequent). These quick-tip posts will generally be shorter and hopefully more frequent (time permitting). They will mostly be of use to Metacoda customers and may include links to the appropriate documentation pages (login required). I will the posts with “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip” so you can browse the collection if you want (currently a collection of 1!).
To kick the series off, this post is about the forced-refresh preferences. These are preferences that control whether or not Metacoda Plug-ins will refresh its cache of SAS security metadata prior to exporting HTML, CSV and Security Test XML files. You will find these preferences as check-boxes located in Security Tools Common Preferences available via the Preferences context menu item from right-mouse clicking over most of the Metacoda Plug-ins.
The defaults for these preferences are all on (checked). This is so that the most recent metadata is always exported. Sometimes however, with larger installations, and where security metadata does not change often, you may want to turn these preferences off (unchecked) to speed up exports. One of the other reasons you may want to turn one or more of these preferences off is to maintain filtering during export. Many of the plug-ins include a Filter Bar to subset the view to only those items of interest.
If you try to export this filtered view, with forced-refresh enabled, the filter will be automatically cleared during the refresh leading to an unfiltered export. This behaviour may change (or be configurable) in a future release but, for now at least, turning off forced-refresh will also allow you to export a filtered view.