CMDB Relationships

[Shane11]

Hi All,
I've recently taken my first step into the CMDB and I've hit a couple weird things with CMDB relationships.

First I wanted to share something I struggled with, I created my relationships but they seemed backwards, because in my mind logically Upstream affects Downsteam, i.e. in a real stream dumping something in the stream affects things down stream. Am I wrong?
I found this explanation in the wiki: "In Upstream and Downstream relationships anything that happens downstream can have an adverse affect on upstream configuration items"
So if you're just starting with the CMDB keep that in mind.


Next I have a question I have my items in my new CMDB tables and created the relationships, but they don't appear to be displaying properly on the form.

My Relationship Structure (as the CMDB sees it) :
Url -> Organization -> Instance -> Location
Upstream <---------------------> Downstream
(Relationships are 1 to Many upstream, i.e. Location 1<->M Instance, etc.)

When I view the relationships, showing 5 levels, in 'Tree View', everything shows fine, it shows everything end to end in both directions, but in 'Flat View' it shows as follows :
Viewing Location shows only Instance in Upstream
-Missing Organization and URL Upstream
Viewing Instance shows Location Downstream and only Organization Upstream
-Missing URL Upstream
Viewing Organization shows only Instance Downstream and Url Upstream
- Missing Location Downstream
Viewing Url shows only Orgainzation and Instance Downstream
-Missing Location Downstream

Should it not be showing the records I noted were missing? Or am I looking at it wrong?

I hope I explained this well enough.

[Shane11]

After more digging I realized that some of them are working properly, going to keep going to see if I can figure out what the difference is.

[Shane11]

When viewing a Url in my CMDB in the relationships under 'Located in - Locations' it shows 'sandbox_e' 11 times (Url Screenshot.png), I know there are 11 grandchild Urls below 'sandbox_e' but it makes no sense (reguardless of the reason) to show the same information and link repeatedly. Is there any way to make it not show that ? Or make it show useful information ?

So much of the CMDB seems wrong logically, am I using it wrong ? Am I alone in thinking there's something wrong in CMDB land ?

[Shane11]

In my last post I mentioned the 11 links to 'sandbox_e', and before that I mentioned that the relationships weren't showing properly, while poking around just after my last message I clicked into 'sandbox_e' and all of the relationships were showing up fine, I backed out of it then clicked back in and the relationships DIDN'T show up properly!!
If I jump in and out of the CI the relationships will randomly work or not.

I think this is officially a bug / instance issue, going to create a support ticket.

If anyone has any insight into my CMDB issues please still speak up.

Thanks again.

[Shane11]

Ok, after a few days of playing with my CMDB and opening a support ticket and explaining to the tech how their system is supposed to work I finally figured out why it wasn't displaying properly.

Duplicated CI Relationships ... ya, that's it.

I created test CIs and their relationships displayed properly so I tried comparing the working and non-working relationships while doing that I noticed the duplicated relationships.

I fixed my script which was creating the relationships when importing the CIs and re-ran it, no more problems.

FUN!!!


My only remaining complaint about the display is in flat view the relationships are out of order.
It's displaying Instance, Url, Organization, where it should be Instance, Organization, Url, but that's a minor complaint.