In data management, consistency is key—especially when dealing with company names across various systems and tables. ServiceNow’s Normalization Data Services plugin offers a powerful solution to this challenge by standardizing company names and their variants. Let’s dive into how this plugin works, its features, and how it can streamline your data management processes.
For a deeper understanding of how to Installing and Configuring Normalization Data Services, be sure to watch the “Ask a Ranger: Software Asset Management” video series Installing and Configuring Normalization Data Services
What is Normalization Data Services?
The Normalization Data Services plugin is designed to maintain consistency in table fields that refer to company names. In databases, particularly those related to configuration items and assets, it's common to encounter multiple references to the same company under different names. This inconsistency can cause issues, especially in reports and data analysis.
The plugin addresses these issues by providing a way to standardize company names across your system. It downloads a comprehensive list of standard company names and their common variants. Whenever a company name field is detected with a variant, the plugin automatically substitutes it with the standardized name.
Key Terminology:
- Normalized Name: The standard company name.
- Discovered Name: The variant name that is detected and replaced.
Features and Benefits
- Automatic Normalization
- The plugin automatically maps variant names to standardized names, reducing the need for manual updates and ensuring consistent data across your system.
- Extensive Predefined Lists
- When you activate the plugin, it comes with extensive lists of common company names and their variants, eliminating the need to create these mappings from scratch.
- Integrated Data Management
- The plugin stores data in two key tables:
- Normalized Company Names Table: Contains the list of standardized company names.
- Normalized Mappings Table: Contains the mappings between discovered names and their normalized counterparts.
- Unique Indexing
- The plugin introduces a unique index or hash on the [core_company] table to ensure that each company name is stored only once. This uniqueness is critical for accurate data processing in features like Discovery and CMDB models.
- Domain Separation
- On domain-separated instances, the unique index is expanded to include hash,sys_scope, allowing each domain to manage its own version of a company with the same name.
Implementing Normalization Data Services
Guided Setup
- Implementing the Normalization Data Services plugin is straightforward, and guided setup helps you configure it to meet your needs effectively.
Modifying Normalized Company Names
- Changes to a normalized company name will affect all fields that refer to that company across the system. This ensures uniformity but also means that updates should be managed carefully to maintain data integrity.
Conclusion
ServiceNow’s Normalization Data Services plugin is an essential tool for any organization looking to ensure consistency and accuracy in its data management processes. By automating the normalization of company names and managing variant names efficiently, the plugin helps avoid discrepancies and enhances the reliability of your reports and data analytics.
Whether you're dealing with complex datasets or simply aiming to streamline your data management practices, the Normalization Data Services plugin provides a robust solution that can significantly improve the quality and consistency of your data.
