How can I get data, as opposed to compliant/not-compliant, from compliance?

Question

I'm new to configuration manager, but I have been through the 2012 MS training class.
My issue is, I'm trying to determine how I can use SCCM in general and Compliance in particular to collect data on the clients.  Here are some examples of the data that I need to collect:
The members of the local administrators group.
The updates that are needed and count of updates that are needed.
The configuration settings (time zone, pagefile configuration, IE ESC status, Firewall settings, SFP setting, and so on.
The frequency of update installation over the past year (or whenever the event log rolls over)
I need to collect this information and report it out in a custom report.  I've tried to do this with compliance, by creating a baseline and deploying it to clients, then adding a configuration item for each piece I want to capture.  The problem
I'm experiencing is that it looks like compliance is giving me a boolean result - compliant or not compliant, when I go to run a report on the data.  I want to get the actual data, in addition to whether or not it is compliant.
I want to use compliance, so I can take advantage of the auto-remediation.  I have set up the configuration items with both check powershell scripts and remediate powershell scripts.
On a related but possibly separate note, I also used a configuration item to attempt to collect data into an MSSQL server.  I created a powershell script that gets the data, and connects to MSSQL and inserts the data; the problem is, that it appears
to not be working.  If I run the script from an interactive powershell command promt or from an iteractive command line, it runs fine.  It even works if I run it from a scheduled task.  But it doesn't appear to work running it from the configuration
item in SCCM 2012 R2, even though Powershell is listed as a valid script type.  Two notes: The execution policy on the clients is set to unrestricted, and the firewall is OFF on the clients.
So my questions are:
Am I going about this the right way?  If not, how SHOULD I go about this?
Am I missing anything in trying to run the powershell scripts in the configuration item?
Here is the script I am trying to run.  I realize that it has the check code mixed with the remediation code, I plan to separate the two once I have the powershell running and updating the database.  Also, I replaced the sensitive information in
the SQL connection string.
$Comp=$env:COMPUTERNAME
Write-Host $Comp
$LocalMachine=Get-ExecutionPolicy -Scope LocalMachine
Write-Host "Local Machine:" $LocalMachine
$UserPolicy=Get-ExecutionPolicy -Scope UserPolicy
Write-Host "User Policy:" $UserPolicy
$Process=Get-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process
Write-Host "Process:" $Process
$CurrentUser=Get-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser
Write-Host "CurrentUser:" $CurrentUser
$MachinePolicy=Get-ExecutionPolicy -Scope MachinePolicy
Write-Host "MachinePolicy:" $MachinePolicy
$Conn = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
$Conn.ConnectionString="Server=SQLInstance;Database=DBName;User Id=user;Password=password"
$Conn.Open()
$Comm = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand
$Comm.Connection=$Conn
$comm.CommandText="DELETE PSExecPolicies WHERE ServerName='" + $Comp + "'"
$Comm.executenonquery()
$CmdStr = "INSERT INTO PSExecPolicies (ServerName, LocalMachine, UserPolicy, Process, CurrentUser, MachinePolicy) VALUES ('" + $Comp + "','" + $LocalMachine + "','" + $UserPolicy  + "','"
+ $Process + "','" + $CurrentUser  + "','" + $MachinePolicy + "')"
$Comm.CommandText = $CmdStr
$Comm.ExecuteNonQuery()
$comm.dispose()
$Conn.Close()
$Conn.Dispose()
if ($MachinePolicy -like "Restricted" -or $MachinePolicy -like "Undefined")
Write-Host "Machine Policy policy was " $MachinePolicy ", changing it to Remote Signed."
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope MachinePolicy -Force
Else
Write-Host "Machine Policy policy was already" $MachinePolicy ", making no changes."
if ($UserPolicy -like "Restricted" -or $UserPolicy -like "Undefined")
Write-Host "User Policy policy was " $UserPolicy ", changing it to Remote Signed."
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope UserPolicy -Force
Else
Write-Host "User Policy policy was already" $UserPolicy ", making no changes."
if ($Process -like "Restricted" -or $Process -like "Undefined")
Write-Host "Process policy was " $Process ", changing it to Remote Signed."
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Process -Force
Else
Write-Host "Process policy was already" $Process ", making no changes."
if ($CurrentUser -like "Restricted" -or $CurrentUser -like "Undefined")
Write-Host "Current User policy was " $CurrentUser ", changing it to Remote Signed."
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser -Force
Else
Write-Host "Current user policy was already" $CurrentUser ", making no changes."
if ($LocalMachine -like "Restricted" -or $LocalMachine -like "Undefined")
Write-Host "Local Machine policy was " $LocalMachine ", changing it to Remote Signed."
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope LocalMachine -Force
Else
Write-Host "Local Machine policy was already" $LocalMachine ", making no changes."

Answer 1

In general no. Compliance settings is designed explicitly for what you said, thumbs up or thumbs down.
To collect data, you need to take advantage of hardware inventory's ability to easily pull information from WMI.
In combination then, you could use compliance settings (via a script) to populate the data in WMI and then HW Inv to collect the data.
Jason | http://blog.configmgrftw.com