Mapped application service 'consumed by' business application

JJ20 · ‎11-10-2022

Hi!

We are in the earlier stages of CSDM and noticed when creating a new Application Service, through the prompts, you can tie it to a business application.

How should mapped application services be handled to create the relationship back to Business Application?

EricDohr · ‎11-10-2022

Congrats on beginning your journey. Regardless of the Population Method of the Application Service, the relationship between Business Application to Application Service is going to follow the same CI Relationship type. The relationship between a Mapped Application Service and Business Application is built manually via a CI relationship versus part of the Service Mapping process.

My assumption is when you are going to a Mapped Application Service record you are not seeing the CI formatter?

If you are using the Application Service Wizard, there is functionality on the main page that will allow you to quickly build relationships to Business Applications, Service Offerings, and Parent Application Services. You can access the wizard via Application Navigator (CSDM > Manage Technical Service > Application Service)

If you are on a Business Application form, there should be a CI Relationship formatter on the out of the box form. This allows you to create a relationship between a Business Application and Application Service following suggested relationship types.

You can also create CI Relationships directly on the CMDB_REL_CI table (if you have the appropriate rights).

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Barry Kant · ‎11-10-2022

hi JJ20,

it is indeed a good question who will do that administration (and maybe also how) from a data governance concept. eg is the Business Application IT Application Owner responsible for this (or another party)? At least it needs to be controlled. Are they responsible for the Application Service level as well?

Do we facilitate that by backend (roles) or do we facilitate that by specific catalog item(s) Manage my Business Service (no roles required).

There is not 1 answer for all scenarios right.
Do you have discovery?
Is the Business Application a DevOps application (then the ownership might be the full stack) or more traditionally supported (where stops the responsibility for the IT Application Owner)?

BR,

Barry

Jim Zeigler1 · ‎11-11-2022

I recommend, if possible, customers create the Business Application, and the Application Services at the same time(and create the relationships between them). I've been deploying Business Applications to Application Services for the past 7 years. If they can't be created at the same time, it is best to capture the relationship when the Application Services are created or when the Application Service is mapped(as part of the service mapping questionnaire).

There is no discovery tool for creating these relationships. If you're like me, I find the OOTB relationship editor hard to use. I prefer adding a relationship tab to the Application Service form and the Business Application form, then enable the EDIT UI action so a slush bucket can be used.

I strongly believe the OOTB relationship between Business Applications and Application Services is backwards. Here is my thinking: One or more Business Applications are bundled together (into an executable by the build tools for custom built applications) and deployed to an Application Service for each environment. The Application Service is actually the parent CI (because it contains the deployed Business Applications) so to be more accurate, the OOTB relationship should be:

Application Service -> Consumes or Uses -> Business Application

Unfortunately, the OOTB relationship is:

Business Application -> Consumes -> Application Service

This is enforced by the CSDM dashboard. To avoid this confusion without disturbing the functionality of the dashboard, I relabel the Suggested Relationship from "Consumes::Consumed by" to "Consumed by::Consumes" or "used by:: uses".