What is request line on alm_hardware used for?

[Ravish Shetty]

We are using the request_line field in the alm_hardware table to relatehardware to request items manually.

So whenever there is a request for certain harwares, our agents manually link the hardware to the request item.

The problem we are facing right now is that a hardware which has more than one requests attached to it cannot be accomodated.

So if a attach Hardware 1 to Request item 1 and later i attach it to Request item 2, it no longer has relation with Request item 1.

To fix this, we created a many to many relationship table between hardware and request item.

This works for us but we wanted to know if there is an out of the box way to do something similar or if it will break some rules or cause undesired behavior.

[Ravish Shetty]

bump

[Steve McCarty]

If you are using requests and purchase orders to generate assets when they are purchased, then the request line (and the purchase order line) should be automatically associated with the asset when it is received.   So that field will link to the initial request created to procure the asset.   So by that definition there should only be one request line associated with the asset.  

It sounds like you are using requests to move assets around, not purchase them, so that you could have multiple requests associated with the same asset.   So creating a many to many relationship is necessary for what you are doing.   I don't know of anything that will break, other than the initial connection between the asset and the request where it was purchased.   Hope that helps.

-Steve