Greg,
It depends on what you need to do. We recently went through (via scripting) and changed all "old" usernames to reflect a new username. It was a pain and didn't work perfectly, but it did what we needed it to do.
If you haven't looked into it yet, you might try adding related lists to the cmdb_ci forms. Of course, there are a lot of tables, so that could be problematic.
On each of our cmdb_ci table forms (business service, application, switch, routers, etc, etc) we have added "CI Relations" to the forms. I thought this was OOB, but may have been done after we got SN (We were pre-Aspen). You can choose how many levels you want to view. If you only want to see what is DIRECLTY related to a specific CI, choose one level. For us, we show three levels by default. If it is not an option to add to the form, first be sure there is some sort of relationship already built between the item you're looking at and something else. If you have relationships and it still doesnt' show up, you may need to build a formatter called CI Relations, then add it.
Another way to use scripting, would be to use the cmdb_ci_rel table. Look for the target items in both parent and child fileds. That should show you all upstream and downstream (respectively) items tied to a specifc CI. However, this only shows one level different. To get more levels than that, you would need to dot.walk.
I'm going through something similar right now, as we are updating our Business Services, and the other items below that. In order to preserve data, I've had to do some research on how to find this info. I hope my pain helps you get through your adventure.
~Lindsey
