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?

[jimmillet]

Hi, I have a followup:

I am working with a small client, they are NOT using Service Mapping or Discovery or SN Event Management. This instance has been in place since 2014, so they loaded all their business applications (aka business services) into cmdb_ci_appl table. I am trying to move them to "crawl" stage of CSDM adoption and I am trying to move these CI's to the Application Service table. Down the road they want to manually map the infrastructure to these application service CI's. The client is at Paris right now. First I thought the table name was "cmdb_ci_service_auto", but now when I look at the docs I see a table named "cmdb_ci_service_discovered". So now I am confused as to which table to move these. In one of these community posts, it was mentioned that "cmdb_ci_service_auto" is just a dummy class and not meant to be populated. In the CSDM 3.0 material it mentions "cmdb_ci_service_discovered", so I tried that. But when I tried to change the class name of one of the existing CI's in cmdb_ci_appl class to "cmdb_ci_service_discovered, I got an error "There are no entry points for service, changing status to Non-Operational". I need these to be operational , so when I changed the status to operational status, I get error message saying" Empty service cannot be operational. Add some entry points".  I am not ready to start any mapping, I just wanted to start the first step of moving the CI's out of cmdb_ci_appl class. Is it OK to move the CI's to "cmdb_ci_service_auto", I got no error messages when I did that.

Sorry for long post.......hoping someone can provide some guidance.

Jim Millet

[Giles Lewis]

Hi Jim. My recommendation would be to move them to cmdb_ci_service. This table has an out-of-box field named service_classification that you can use (for now) to categorize them as "Application Service".  At some point in the future you can use the "Convert to Application Service" UI Action to convert them. Historically many customers used cmdb_ci_service to manage their lists of applications.  ServiceNow created "Convert to Application Service" to help these legacy customers migrate to CSDM.

[jimmillet]

Giles, thanks for response. I may have to use cmdb_ci_service. The only hesitation I have is that cmdb_ci_service (Business Service) in CSDM 3.0 is now in the "Sell/Consume" domain and not in the "Manage Technical Services" Domain where Application Service is. I guess I wanted to be "CSDM 3 Compliant" and not use the legacy cmdb_ci_service. But since not ready for infrastructure mapping that looks to be my only choice. Unless others see a better choice?

Jim

[l337]

"I just wanted to start the first step of moving the CI's out of cmdb_ci_appl class"

The CSDM 4.0 Draft slide 26 indicates this table consists of deployed programs, modules, or groups of programs designed to provide specific functionality on a compute infrastructure. This includes database instances, web applications, etc.

I don't believe CIs were meant to be moved outside of this table. The table cmdb_ci_service_auto has a label of application service vs application for cmdb_ci_appl.

[CasperJT]

Hi Jim,

According to the documentation you should be able to create Application Services without entry points.

"An application service has an entry point, which lets users access the application service. If you are at the planning stage and do not know what the entry points are for an application service, you can create the application service without entry points. Such an application service is referred to as an empty application service, to which you can add entry points at any later time."

Create an application service (servicenow.com)

Populate an application service using the Manual method (servicenow.com)

So according to ServiceNow's documentation it is supposed to be possible to create Application Services without entry points.

Br.

Casper