I need a simple explanation of some terminology

[Grippy Shadow]

Basically, I’m studying for the CSA exam, and really need assistance. But if you could please simplify, because I still don’t understand someone else’s explanation to my query. Basically, I’m confused with what is meant by accessing fields on related tables, and what is meant by selected reference fields.

[Eswar Chappa]

Hi @Grippy Shadow the below community article will help you to understand the related table fields,

https://www.servicenow.com/community/in-other-news/how-to-access-related-tables-in-servicenow-report...

Cheers, hope that helps

Eswar Chappa

*** Please mark as "Correct" or "Helpful" as appropriate ***

[Omkar G1]

Hello

Reference type of fields are the fields which holds the data (or record) from another table.
For example, Opened by field on the Incident table could a reference field referencing to the Users table.

Now, even if the display value for the Opened by field is the Name of the user that does not mean other fields on the Users table cannot be accessed from the incident table. We could still dot walk to access other fields like active, supervisor on the Users table. This is known as accessing fields on related tables.

I am not sure about the context for "selected reference fields" here but I think it means selected record (or value) in the reference field (in our example, Opened by selected for the incident).

[Vishal Birajdar]

Let’s say , We have two tables.

1. User table – Where we have information about User like  

• Name of user
• Gender of user
• Age  
• Address of user.

2. Address table - As we know Address contains 

• Flat Number
• Building Name
• Area
• City
• Country
• Full Address Name 

As we also have Address of user field on “User” table we can directly refer that address from “Address” table.

Here , The Address  of user  field from User table refer’s to record from Address Table.

From Address  of user field we can access all the fields from Address table by using dot-walking like -

address_of_user.flat_no                     //07

address_of_user.building                  // Pentagon

address_of_user.area                        // Wall street

address_of_user.city                         // Paris

address_of_user.country                 // France

Hope this helps.....!!!