Ability to nest Application Services

[spietrofeso]

I am a little confused 🙂

It is my understanding that you do not nest Application Services within themselves (i.e. Application Service - Parent with Application Service - Child).

From an Application Service Group perspective, we can easily nest them for Service Operations.

From a Service Portfolio view - we align Application Services to Service Offerings

Application Services can contain Technical Service Offerings 

I am struggling with this csdm_view of Application Service and Set Relationship to Parent Application Service

If I set this relationship, on the Service Map it provides IMO an OK view of the maps but in reality the alert on shows on the impacted application service map even though I can see both maps on the view.

In SOW, I can see alerting propagate but no where can I see a depends on view.

My questions:

1) Is it a leading practice to nest Application Services (not ASGs)?

2) If so, how is this done and seen in the platform?

Application Service Depends on Application Service

Application Service sends Data to Application Service

Thanks in advance

[Barry Kant]

Hi There are multiple ways to get what you need:

Application Service relation to another Application Service is the easiest way. (relationship type can differ) but that way it should also be calculated for impact analysis if that is done on relations. 
Another way is to use APIs in the middle :
Application Service --> API --> Application Service (this in line with Digital Interfaces). 
If you use relations it should be shown in dependency views as well. 
Depending on the type of application service (Mapped or Calculated) it will be synced to CI Associations as well. 

but recap:
Yes it is common to make models this way to show/identify dependencies/impact of E2E solutions.

BR,
Barry

[spietrofeso]

Thanks Barry for your feedback.

I guess my question is more aligned with theory.

Application Services by their definition are a logical representation of a deployed application stack. I am having a hard time picturing how App Service A (Prod) should be a parent to App Service B (Prod) from an application service perspective.

I can see how App Service A (Prod) sends data to App Service B (Prod).

The only place I see where ServiceNow even mentions Parent Application Service is in the csdm_view of Application Service. I cannot find any other documentation or reference to this.

[rcook]

Hi,

The 2 key scenarios for the Parent Child Relationship between Application Services are Platform - Host application and Microservices, when you have a decomposed monolith. 

These 2 videos have been produced by Mark Bodman to explain these situations. Beter to have it in his words than my translation.
CSDM Example Series: Microservices (youtube.com)

CSDM Example Series: Platforms (youtube.com) 

[swarner]

To expand on Barry's response...  Let's say you have a Prod Application Service such as "Microsoft Exchange Prod On-Premise."  Exchange also needs the Prod Internal DNS Application Service to operate.  Therefore have Exchange and any other applications as the parent Application Service to the Prod DNS Application Service. 

Another alternative is to have queries for both DNS and Exchange CIs in a single CMDB Group that is then used in a Dynamic CI Group so that all of the CIs are in a single Application Service.  However, this breaks the definition of an Application Service since you really have two stacks now in a single Application Service.