Matching Machine Serial Number to a Asset Tag

Question

Is there a way to take the machine Serial Number (From System Profiler possiblely) and match it to a file that has Serial Numbers and Asset Tags from a inventory database?
1. Define Serial Number through System Profiler
2. Scan File with Serial Numbers and Asset Tags which are tied together.
3. Once match is made the Asset Tag is known
3. Make the Asset Tag a environment variable.
G4 1.42   Mac OS X (10.3.5)  

Answer 1

You don't define the format of the file that contains asset numbers and serial numbers (and I think the 'tie together' is making it sound harder than it is.
In any case:
1. Define Serial Number through System Profiler
system_profiler will tell you this. You can ask for the specific hardware information, then parse out the serial number, like:
/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ { print $3}'
2. Scan File with Serial Numbers and Asset Tags which are tied together.
Without knowing this file format it's impossible to tell how to do this for sure, but if the file was a simple tab-delimited file of asset number<tab>serial number, then:
awk '/<serial_number>/ {print $1}' /path/to/asset_file
You can now string the two together, like:
#! /bin/sh
SERIAL=`/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ { print $3 }'`
echo "Found serial number ${SERIAL}"
ASSETNO=`/usr/bin/awk "/${SERIAL}/ { print \\$1 }" /var/tmp/assets`
echo "Found asset number $ASSETNO"
export ASSETNO
Note the user of double-backslashes in the second awk to overcome shell expansion issues.