Home
Tools
This section explains how to use additional tools provided with HCL AppScan Standard.
PowerTools
AppScan offers access to five utilities (PowerTools), each providing a specific feature to help you manage your application security or to help you use AppScan.
Expression Test
Writing precise regular expressions can be a tedious trial-and-error process. You can use the Expression Test PowerTool to help accelerate the process.
Pattern groups
Applying a regular expression to a group of characters or metacharacters.

Tools
This section explains how to use additional tools provided with HCL AppScan Standard.
- Options dialog box
  This section describes options you can control, to customize AppScan, from the Options dialog box (Tools > Options).
- Web Services Wizard extension
  This extension lets you scan using Open API description files. It is available from Tools > Extensions > Web Services Wizard (Open API), and the extension is enabled by default.
- Scan Scheduler
- User-Defined Tests
- PowerTools
  AppScan offers access to five utilities (PowerTools), each providing a specific feature to help you manage your application security or to help you use AppScan.
  - Authentication Tester
    The Authentication Tester PowerTool is a testing utility that uses the "brute-force" technique to reveal weak username-password combinations that could be used to gain access to your web application. (A brute force attack is an automated process of trial and error used to guess authentication credentials, causing a server to acknowledge an imposter as a legitimate user.)
  - Connection Test
    The Connection Test PowerTool enables you to ping web sites without using the Ping protocol, which is blocked by many firewalls.
  - Encode/Decode
    The Encode/Decode PowerTool encodes and decodes strings you put into it, to and from the format of your choice.
  - Expression Test
    Writing precise regular expressions can be a tedious trial-and-error process. You can use the Expression Test PowerTool to help accelerate the process.
    - Using Expression Test
    - Text replacements
      Replacing text that matches a specific pattern.
    - Pattern groups
      Applying a regular expression to a group of characters or metacharacters.
    - Metacharacters
      General information about metacharacters.
  - HTTP Request Editor
    The HTTP Request Editor PowerTool enables you to send a fully-controlled HTTP request to your site, to test how your site responds to different kinds of HTTP request.
- Customizing the Tools menu
- Extensions
- Logs
  Logs can help you troubleshooting.
- Searching Results
  You can filter the Result List in any of the views, for specific data.

Pattern groups

Applying a regular expression to a group of characters or metacharacters.

Often you need to apply a regular expression to a group of characters or metacharacters.

To group a set, put the characters in parentheses ( ).

The group is given a number in the Match Groups box and the matching text is displayed next to it.

If a match occurs, you can see which text matches which group in the Match Groups box.

For example, you have an HTML code with <UL>first in the text.

You type (<.L>)([a-z ]*) as the regular expression.

In the Text field, <UL>first is highlighted in red.

In Match Groups, the groups are broken down:

Group 1 <UL>
Group 2 first