Depends on: Relationship between Application service and Application

[Abigail]

I have a quick question
I received a request to change the relationship from Contained by to Depends on.

• The parent is the Application
• The child is the Application Service

My question is: I need to remove the Contained by relationship and replace it with Depends on. However, when I make the change, I notice that the parent and child seem to switch roles.

For example:

• XXX-XXX (Parent)
• XXX-XXX-DEV (Child)

With Contained by, the parent is XXX-XXX and the child is XXX-XXX-DEV. But when I change it to Depends on, the parent becomes XXX-XXX-DEV and the child becomes XXX-XXX.

Is this behavior correct?

[Bhuvan]

@Abigail 

Check if you are mapping it correctly, refer below documentation

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-servicenow-platform/page/product/configuration-managem...

Parent -> Contains || Child -> Contained by

Parent -> Depends on || Child -> Used by

If this helped to answer your query, please mark it helpful & accept the solution. 

Thanks,

Bhuvan

[doug_schulze]

Without knowing the details of the request or your current environment, would strongly suggest not changing any out of box relationships. You can break things that you never knew could be broken 🙂

[kaushal_snow]

Hi @Abigail ,

In CMDB the relationship types define the direction and nature of dependencies between Configuration Items... When you change a relationship from Contained by to Depends on,the roles of the parent and child CIs are reversed. This means that what was previously the parent CI becomes the child CI, and vice versa.

For example, if you have an Application Service (e.g., XXX-XXX-DEV) that is contained by an Application (e.g. XXX-XXX), the relationship indicates that the application contains the application service. When you change this relationship to Depends on, the application service now depends on the application, making the application the dependent CI and the application service the parent CI...

If you found my response helpful, please mark it as ‘Accept as Solution’ and ‘Helpful’. This helps other community members find the right answer more easily and supports the community.

[Moritz Ruprecht]

From my perspective you should not change the data model. The Application should always be below of the Application Service. I think you should use Business Application in terms of the application on your side. 

Here is an important sentence from ServiceNow Docoumentation:
Important: The application table [cmdb_ci_appl] isn't an inventory or portfolio of your applications. Don't make the mistake of storing managed application details in the application table. Those details (inventory or application portfolio objects) belong in the business application table (as documented in Design & Planning domain in the CSDM model).


Source in the documentation: 
https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-servicenow-platform/page/product/csdm-implementation/c...