Firewall control by API

Hi,

For a Customer Portal we are developing I am looking to include basic reporting from the Fortinet firewall (as a start with more control added later). Searching for API and web services documentation only gets me to the Fortinet Developer Network. Access to this is via SKU and is several thousand $ per year. It seems strange that Fortinet want to create a barrier for people to develop external apps to control their products but I guess there is reason to that somewhere. So in lieu of paying that princely sum does anyone know where we can get some basic documentation about APIs?

Thanks.