CMDB groups and changes

[Eric M]

In the Istanbul and jakatra release came the concept of CMDB groups. anyone using them with change ? and how are you using them?

Best,

Eric

[Eric M]

this is what i got out of the knowledge 17 slides .. but i don't see the option to use them everywhere

CMDB Groups

-Challenges

-No out-of-box tool to group a list of CIs

-Customers develop their own ad-hoc scripts

Type of Groups

-Manual   group

-Query Builder saved query Encoded Query

-Encoded Query

Benefits

—Allow customizing a group once and use everywhere ---???

—Provide central place to view and add CI to a group

—Provide aggregated view on CI's operational status and actions within a group

[Paul Coste2]

Yes, I agree.   While on the surface the CMDB Group seems to have addressed some of the concerns, it does not provide the actual use cases that most people would look to use.

[phsdm]

Has anyone made any progress on this, or heard from ServiceNow about best practices around cmdb_group and cmdb_ci_group?   Use cases I am interested in:

1. On a form, the user selects a Category choice.   When they navigate to the Configuration Item field, it is filtered to show only members of a group corresponding to the Category.   Corollary is to filter the Affected Items list based on the Category.
2. On a form, the user uses a CI Group field to select a CI Group by name.   The Configuration Item field is filtered using that group.   Corollary:   The same applies to Affected Items.
3. ON a form, the user uses a CI Groups List of CI Group References to select multiple CI Groups.   The Configuration Item field is filtered using that group.   Corollary:   The same applies to the Affected Items related list.

With all of these, I am concerned about how this will scale and perform.   The CMDBGroupAPI script include runs the queries and returns an array of Sys IDs.   This is fine for a group holding a few hundred CIs.   But how will it perform with a group holding thousands?   If a group holds hundreds of thousands will memory errors and pauses of seconds become an issue?

Is there an Auto-Completer that works with one or multiple CMDB Groups?

Is there a way to convert a query built with the CMDB Query builder into something can be submitted as part of an encoded query?

If an auto-completer could refactor the clauses of one or more CMDB Groups into a single [encoded] GlideRecord query, then interactive selection of a CI from a large CMDB Group (hundreds of thousands of CIs) would scale.

[Eric M]

I haven't heard a things

[JB23]

I am also interested in # 2 from your list. It would seem an intuitive use for CMDB Groups but after an hour of futzing with it last night, no dice.