Application Service (cmdb_ci_service_discovered vs. cmdb_ci_service)

[J Shone]

Looking at the white paper I am a little confused on Application Service.

Application Service is defined as "Logical representation of a deployed application stack"

It maps to cmdb_ci_service_discovered and the white paper does not mention cmdb_ci_service (classification=application).

That said the PDI examples of Application Service are using cmdb_ci_service.  And the service classification is available on cmdb_ci_service for Application Service.

What are ServiceNow saying or what is your real-world experience?

If you haven't enabled Discovery do you use cmdb_ci_service (classification=application)?  

Once you enable discovery do you convert to use cmdb_ci_service_discovered?  

Or are both tables meant to be used in parallel?

[Giles Lewis · Accepted solution]

Great question!

cmdb_ci_service_discovered is a legacy table that was created several years ago as part of the Service Mapping product. When CSDM was introduced they decided to repurpose the existing table. You are supposed to ignore the fact that "discovered" is part of the name, and feel free to manually populate the Application Service table. (I am not sure what happens later if you decide to install Service Mapping; but I assume they have figured this out and there are no worries.)

Note that in the class model cmdb_ci_service_discovered inherits from cmdb_ci_service. If you add a record to Application Service [cmdb_ci_service_discovered] then it is automatically added to Business Service [cmdb_ci_service]. You can also convert a Business Service to an Application Service.

[Ishan4]

HI Giles, could you tell how to convert Business Service to Application Service? There is one doc available but that doesn't help me as I am a bit starter in it. The doc suggests there should be a button on business service page but in my instance it isn't . Could you help me with it. Thanks.

[Alec Hanson]

Hi,

I agree with Giles and indeed in a previous implementation we had our Application Services within cmdb_ci_service which caused lots of confusion with it being labelled 'Business Service'.

When the cmdb_ci_service_discovered class was re-purposed as Application Service, we moved these over to ensure they could be maintained separately.

cmdb_ci_service_discovered is definitely the class you want to use and even though you might not be using discover now it allows you to mature into this in the future without any costly rework. Also this is where these are expected for other ServiceNow Product dependencies and potentially for 3rd Party integrations.

Alec

[Paul Santaniell]

JS,

My initial plan is to use both. I believe that cmdb_ci_service_discovered is intended for App Services that can be discovered using automated Service Mapping. Once we're ready to Service Map, we'll use the UI action to "convert to application service" which will extend it from cmdb_ci_service into cmdb_ci_service_discovered. The Application Services with manual service mapping will stay in cmdb_ci_service.

Paul