XSL Transform to .audit Conversion

Several compliance check plugins rely on auditing XML content, such as Palo Alto, VMware, and Unix compliance checks. To better take advantage of these capabilities, it is beneficial to become familiar with creating XSL Transforms. In some cases, building an XSL Transform will require a bit of trial-and-error. Once you become familiar with that process, converting into an .audit is the next step and may not be intuitive. This appendix provides users proper guidance on how to build and utilize custom XSL Transforms, and convert them into .audit files.

Several audit checks (e.g., AUDIT_XML, AUDIT_VCENTER, AUDIT_ESX) are separate and distinct, but use the same underlying logic. Understanding the fundamentals of working with XML allow you to translate them directly to other platforms that utilize XML.

By using the xsltproc utility, you can follow these steps to generate custom .audit files for XML content:

1. Install xsltproc
2. Identify the XML File to Use
3. Become Familiar with XSL Transforms and XPath
4. Create the XSLT Transform
5. Verify the XSLT Transform Works
6. Copy the XSLT to the .audit
7. Final Audit