Hi all,

This is a really interesting topic. I'm sure many companies are struggling with it. The Design domain of the CSDM kind of includes this Application module as a "Platform app" type of Business Application, but putting it there and NOT to use it as an operational CI creates a lot of "duplication" and confusion downstream.

I know one customer who decided to use Business Apps as operational CIs despite the recommendation in the CSDM. So, this is definitely not the correct answer when it comes to CSDM, but seems to work. So, they only model the "production environment" as Business Applications while Application Service and downwards can represent other environments also. In this model, they also decided to create application modules as Business Applications for selected platforms (but not all by default).

Following the recommendation from s4scott and the approach taken by one of our customers, I could add this "type" on the Business Application class (or add choices to one of the existing type fields, like the architecture type for example).

Darin has a point too, keep it simple. Only add complexity with a proper use / business case.

I hope Scott and others from the ServiceNow's CSDM team would elaborate on this more in their future use case examples. I'm not fully committed to the idea of only using Business Apps for design / enterprise architecture use cases.

All-in-all, before there is a bulletproof model for Application Modules, I think it's important simply to pick your model and stick with it. Once you have a model, then it's also easier to change it later.