Discovery Model Rule table

[Parul Chaudhary]

Hello Experts @SrinivasRamanu1 @dreinhardt 

I am trying to understand what is the significance of product map and package map referenced in "rule table" in discovery model table. I was reviewing the normalization for Microsoft Project with version and edition details being discovered (discovery source is SG-SCCM) but still the discovery model was not normalized fully. It showing as Partially Normalized with no version and edition normalized which is why it is linked to a generic Software Model - "Microsoft Project". I started to look further into other records and attributes on discovery model table to understand why specific installs where not fully normalized even after all details were discovered and found attribute called "Rule table" showing "Product map" for these partially normalized records. I am not sure what the significance of rule table is and also trying to understand why this isn't fully normalized?

Thanks,

Parul Chaudhary

[dreinhardt]

Hi @Parul Chaudhary,

what a nice question and finding, looking forward to the response of SN!

I never went so deep into the structure, but I realized that the normalization is based on a "full-string match" - we often seen that discovery models are not fully normalized as soon the patch level changed and the version is *.26012 instead of *.26011.

I'm looking forward to the new Xanadu feature "wide-net normalization"

If certain software discovery models share similar discovered field values, the Software Asset Management application normalizes them using wide-net normalization principles, which reduces the need for the Content Service team to create separate normalization rules for each product.

Note: Only certain software products are eligible for wide-net normalization. These software products are determined by the Content Service team.

Best, Dennis

[resnofendri]

Hi @Parul Chaudhary,

For a discovery model to be fully "Normalized," the normalization rules need to come from the "Package Map" (i.e., the Content Library contains a normalization rule that defines the full strings of the discovery model down to the version level). Otherwise, when the closest match available in Content Library is only down to the product level (i.e., no normalization rule exists to define which version it should normalize to), that indicates "Product Map" rule is being used, therefore, the discovery model is only "Partially Normalized."

Customers can elevate these "Partially Normalized" discovery models to be fully "Normalized" by either submit a content request (CR) so that our Content Team can create "Package Map" rules for them; or create the rules manually on their instance (this is where the discovery models become "Manually Normalized").

As @dreinhardt mentioned above (thank you!), it is possible for for discovery models to be "Partially Normalized" because the match needs to be precise and no rule with this precise match exists in Content Library yet, therefore, needs to be created. Xanadu's Wide-Net Normalization is intended to bring this enhancement, allowing existing package rules to cover discovery models whose discovered versions are only slightly-different from the ones where the rules already exist.

For example, when package rules already exist for discovered version 1.1, any discovery models with discovered versions 1.1.% (e.g., 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, and so on) would be instantly normalized similarly as the one with version 1.1.

Hope that helps!

Thanks,

Resno

[Parul Chaudhary]

Hi @resnofendri and @dreinhardt 

Thank you for sharing great insights on this. I actually started looking into the rule table since I observed a weird normalization issue with Microsoft products (not limited to Microsoft but majority of products impacted are Microsoft related) See screenshots below. Although these discovery models are fully normalized but the normalized publishers isn't Microsoft so I started comparing the results to understand the root cause. See below:

When you look deeper into the discovery models they are indicating an error message. I also observed similar publisher discrepancy issue in "User subscription" table related to M365 subscription data:  

Thanks,

Parul Chaudhary

[dreinhardt]

Hi @Parul Chaudhary,

looks like a content db issue. You should raise a support case with the content team.

Best, Dennis