cmdb_sam_sw_install table - Install Location 100 characters limitation

[Ravi K2]

We are leveraging ServiceNow Discovery tool within our company. We are on Quebec Patch 9. We are leveraging the ServiceNow Discovery to scan our technology assets and the software install gets captured in the cmdb_sam_sw_install table. Discovery able to capture the "install location" information but as the field length is restricted to 100 characters (String Type), the install location value getting truncated. We have a business need to capture the full "install location" details:

1) Wondering how this is handled in other companies and what is the best practice to capture the full install location details?

2) We tried to increase the "Install Location" field length from 100 characters to 1024 characters on the CMDB_SAM_SW_INSTALL. Is this the right approach to take? If we extend the column length, do you have any impacts during the upgrades (Queue ->Rome/San Diego)?

3) Are there any other tables/columns that "Install Location" gets stored? We are wondering if we are referencing the correct table/field (cmdb_sam_sw_install/install location)?

Please advice asap.

Thanks 

[Ravi K2]

Another question related to the above question:

4) If we increase the "install location" length from 100 characters to 1024 characters, wondering if ServiceNow converts the data type. Currently this field is "String" data  type with 100 character length.

[Anitha17]

Hi Ravi, 

I to have received similar requirement to populate the data for "Install Location" field.

Currently no data/information is getting populate for this field in CMDB_SAM_SW_INSTALL class table. Can you please share, how did you configured this field to get those information. 

Thanks in advance. 

Regards,

Anitha. 

[Ravi K2]

Hi Anitha,

We are using out-of-box discovery functionality to pull the install location attribute for the CMDB_SAM_SW_INSTALL table. The % of install location data is very low (< 20%). We are also trying to look for opportunities to improve the install location attribute populated for the majority of the SW install records. We get number of operational tickets where the asset teams reporting that tool is discovering incorrect version and they ask for evidence how the tool discovered this product. 

Btw, we have increased the length to 255 instead of 1024 as if you go beyond 255, SN internally changes the data type.

Please do share here if you have heard any options to improve the install location discovery.

Thanks