Difference between Computers and Workstations

[Brian Lancaster]

In the CMDB under base items there are two categories or Computers and Workstations.   Does anybody know what the difference between these would be?

[A Westervelt · Accepted solution]

The cmdb_ci_computer table contains all systems: client and servers. The base class of Computer is specifically clients while the extended classes of Windows Server, Linux Server, etc. are included.

In short, Workstations has Class = Computer to show you only client systems and Computer will give you both client and server systems.

[peterraeves]

To expand on what Andrew said, here is the Schema map of Computer.

You can see Computer is a base class (base in this conversation), which is extended by Server and Storage Switch. Server is then further extended into the different kinds of servers (Windows, Linux, etc). If you then click on "Workstation" in the menu, you can see it is just a filtered view on the Computer table. Top left you always see the Table (or class in case of CIs, because every class of CI has its own table) you are working in, which in this case is Computer, but filtered on only the base class Computer, filtering out all extended classes. So basically, Workstations are all computers, which are not more than computers, like servers or storage switches.