Linking Software Model table to the Software Discovery Model table

[Frank Nijssen]

Hi,

We are currently implementing Life Cycle Management in SAM-P and we and we would like to create a report linking records in the Software Installation table to Software Model Lifecycle table. We created a database view, joining several tables in our attempt to achieve this.
One of the joins in this view is about linking the Software Model table to the Software Discovery Model .

Within a record of the Software Model table, you can click on Show Matching Software Discovery Models in Related Links and it shows something like this:I clicked on the filter icon and I concluded from this that the connecting fields would be
Product, Language, Platform, Edition and Version.

However, the ServiceNow Docs on
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-it-service-management/page/product/asset-management/conce...
says this about the subject:

The ServiceNow platform uses any of the following field combinations to match the new software discovery model to an
existing software model.

• Display Name, Publisher, and Version
• Display Name and Version if the Publisher field is empty
• Display Name only if the Publisher and Version fields are empty

This is not the same as the filter with the 5 fields mentioned above and the database view produces different results when I use these two alternate field options.

Could anyone advise me on what would be the recommended way to join these two tables?

[Daniel Slocum]

Frank,

The link is dynamic OOB on purpose.  The Reconciliation engine utilizes the values in the Discovery mapping on the SW Model to return the Discovery Models to consider when calculating compliance.  The value in the linkage being dynamic is that licensing of a SW Installation can be covered by more than one SW Entitlement.  For example, reconciliation will prioritize suites over suite components.  Cascading Upgrades/Downgrades also play into the recon logic as well as new capability on the horizon where nested suites can be calculated properly.  If the product were limited to just one SW Model/Discovery Model link, these types of calculations would not be possible.  For what its worth, the older version of SAM used a 1:1 methodology, and it struggled to meet growing licensing complexity. 

What is your use case?  Why are you trying to accomplish this?  Maybe I or another community member can help you in another manner. 

[demaroj]

So basically your saying it's better to have a robust and accurate set of software models using discovery models, than to rely on a Software Installations data that tracks all software installed.  The software installation data might be capturing more information than needed.  

[Daniel Slocum]

SAM is designed to leverage SW Models and Discovery Models (queried by the Discovery Map seeded values) to return a subset of Software Installations during reconciliation. It is significantly less resource intensive than working with the entire software installation recordset, which frequently reaches in the multiples of millions of records in most customer instances. 

It is clear from the reset of the dialog in this thread that the OP was trying to create a Lifecycle report that reflects the lifecycle details for each software installation.  At the time of the initial post, there was no easy method to do this.

However, there were OOB reports added in subsequent releases that help with this use case. They can be found in the Reporting module.

[Frank Nijssen]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for responding.

In this particular case we are not using the entitlement compliance subjects, but for managing Life Cycle Management issues.

We populate and update the Software Installation table weekly with data from discovery tools (TADDM, BFI, Kraken).

By linking the tables
Software Installation -> Software Discovery Model -> Software Model -> Software Model Lifeycycle,
we aim at retrieving the corresponding risk of the End-of-Support or End-of-Extended-Support life cycle phase for each item in the Software Installation table. By 

Would this clarify some more at what we are trying to achieve here?