Trust & Transparency

How Update Center Works

This page explains how AIXOSQuiz aggregates official IBM release information, how often feeds sync, how we classify and verify entries, and how we correct errors. It is the public methodology for the IBM Update Center.

At a Glance

Official IBM machine-readable sources only — no HTML scraping.
Scheduled sync about every six hours (UTC), with Feed Health visibility.
Always verify critical changes against the original IBM document.
Report incorrect entries via Contact — we publish a correction policy.

Last Editorial Review

Last editorial review: . Reviewed for source accuracy (including IBM Product Security Central / PSIRT), sync cadence wording, landing FAQs, and public trust disclosures.

Ownership: AIXOSQuiz editorial / platform maintainer. Contact: contact@aixosquiz.com or the contact form.

How Update Center Works

The Update Center is an educational aggregator. It does not replace IBM Support, Fix Central, or FLRT for production decisions. Pipeline in plain language:

  1. Fetch — scheduled jobs poll documented IBM RSS, Atom, JSON, and PSIRT search APIs listed in our source registry.
  2. Normalize — titles, URLs, summaries, and dates are sanitized; HTML is stripped from text fields; each row receives a content hash.
  3. Classify — product and category are inferred with documented rules (for example AIX, VIOS, Security, Redbook) so landings stay consistent.
  4. Dedupe & persist — duplicates are reduced by canonical URL and related keys, then stored for the public read API.
  5. Present — the website reads only the public /api/v1/ Update Center API. The browser never talks to the database directly.

Browse the live catalog at /updates/. Product landings such as AIX, Security, FLRT Lite, and Redbooks apply the same catalog with filters.

Source Registry

Every ingested feed is declared in a source registry (data/ibm-sources.json in the public repository). We only enable sources that are official IBM endpoints with a stable machine-readable format.

Currently implemented (public)

  • IBM Redbooks — publications and residencies RSS.
  • IBM FLRT Lite — HMC, AIX, and VIOS JSON recommendation tables.
  • IBM Product Security Central (PSIRT) — public security search API for Power-relevant advisories.

Waiting on operator configuration

  • IBM My Notifications / optional Security Bulletins Atom — personal subscription URLs (IBM ID). Never committed to the repository. When configured, they supplement—not replace—PSIRT for security rows.

What we intentionally do not do

  • HTML scraping of IBM Support pages or Fix Central UI.
  • Undocumented reverse engineering of private APIs.
  • Hardcoding credentials or personal My Notifications URLs in source control.
  • Presenting community or third-party “IBM update” feeds as official.

Operators maintain a longer evaluation matrix in the public repository (IBM Source Catalog). Public claims on this page follow that catalog.

Sync Cadence

Production sync runs on a six-hour schedule (UTC) (0 */6 * * *). Individual sources also declare recommended poll intervals (for example Redbooks ~6 hours, FLRT Lite daily). A failing source does not block the rest of a sync run.

The Update Center UI exposes Feed Health so visitors can see whether sources look fresh. “Last synced” reflects successful catalog persistence, not a guarantee that IBM published something new in the last window.

Manual operator syncs may run outside the cron window for recovery. Scheduled work respects a short serverless time budget so finalize and health updates can complete.

Verification Process

Readers and operators should treat AIXOSQuiz as a discovery layer:

  1. Open the Update Center entry and follow the canonical IBM URL on the detail page.
  2. Confirm product, version, severity, and remediation language on the IBM page (or FLRT Lite / Redbooks abstract).
  3. For security advisories, prefer IBM Product Security Central / the linked bulletin over any summary text shown here.
  4. For fix levels, validate against IBM FLRT Lite and your environment’s support matrix before change windows.

Card and detail summaries may include IBM abstracts when the feed provides them. When abstracts are missing, we show a clear generated fallback rather than an empty description — fallbacks are labeled by context (for example Redbooks / security) and are not a substitute for IBM text.

Editorial Policy

Update Center content is machine-aggregated from official sources, then lightly classified for navigation. We do not rewrite IBM advisories as original research. Educational articles and quizzes on AIXOSQuiz are separate editorial products and are not auto-generated from the update catalog.

  • Independence — AIXOSQuiz is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by IBM.
  • Attribution — IBM trademarks remain IBM’s; each update links to the originating IBM resource when available.
  • No paywall on official links — we do not gate the path to IBM documentation.
  • Landing copy — product landing heroes and FAQs are human-reviewed and must match the live source registry (for example Security describes PSIRT, not obsolete My Notifications-only workflows).
  • Ads — this methodology page is marked ads-off; catalog pages may show site-wide advertising consistent with Privacy and Terms.

Content Governance

When the source registry or public ingest behavior changes, maintainers should:

  1. Update data/ibm-sources.json and the internal Source Catalog notes.
  2. Update landing FAQs / hero copy that mention specific feeds in the same change set.
  3. Update this Methodology page and the date.
  4. Confirm Feed Health after the next successful sync.
  5. Keep security and privacy constraints: no secrets in git; no scraping of gated HTML.

Placeholder My Notifications rows (empty subscription folder pages) are filtered and must not appear in the public catalog.

Error Correction Policy

If you find a wrong product label, broken IBM link, misleading summary, or stale security row, please report it. Include the Update Center URL (or item id), the IBM URL you expected, and a short description of the issue.

We aim to acknowledge actionable reports and correct catalog or classification issues in a subsequent sync or content fix. IBM remains the authoritative publisher; if IBM updates or withdraws a notice, that upstream change takes precedence.

Related Links