Technical Services Table

[lbless1]

I am wondering what the pros and cons are to extending the cmdb_ci_service table to create a technical services table. I know SNOW used to use that model, but does not use it now. The jury seems to be out on what use best practice.

Any thoughts on best practice?

[Uncle Rob]

I've become a bit of a CMDB cynic.   *Hopefully* this might save you some time and headache.

Of the mathematical set of sound ideas, there is a subset of sound ideas that have greater "reason for being" than others.   The Business / Technical Service discussion of the CMDB is not one of these.   Meaning: its quite possibly a *good* idea to have a distinction between business / technical services, but the idea will provide no extra value for the business... because nobody sees the reason for being. What are you going to get at the end of a month where the distinction exists?   In many a project I've seen, just wasted implementation hours to deploy to a culture that didn't get it (and that's not their fault).

So my advice to you is not to implement something tool-side without a greater organizational impetus.   A Service Management discipline must have a reason within themselves to want the distinction before the distinction makes it to the tool.

Assuming you're already there, experiment a bit.   Maybe a choice field on the Service table is enough to make the distinction?   I would make a new table extension *unless* the new table had unique and specific properties and relationships that the base Services table did not.

[lbless1]

Here is one feedback that I received from a few more SNOW folks:

The tables are basically on the same physical table anyway due to extension. It's really just to make it simpler to have different form layouts and security models without having to base that stuff off of a type attribute.

I think this makes sense if you foresee high customization of fields in relation to service classification categories.

[saprem_d]

Hello,

I would suggest not to extend the table. What can be done is you can create a new field on cmdb_ci_service class as "Type" with 2 options, business services and Technical services and then categorize your data which can then be tracked easily.

[lbless1]

So, you do not see any performance issues with all types of services in 1 table? There is already a service categorization field on the service table to use. I had heard there could be performance issues, but I am thinking it is more force of habit to create a new table.