What is a Glide List and Docuéent ID field type ?

wakespirit
Kilo Guru

Dear all,

I am just studying ServiceNow and I have seen in different document when going to database structure, that when designing a One to many relationship between 2 tables a field type of Glide List, or Document ID and Reference can be used for that.

In my SQL server work a one to many relation is setup by using a simple foreign key fields to reference table.

What is the use of field type Glide List and Document ID ?

Thanks for clarification and sample to illustrate

regards

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Mark Stanger
Giga Sage

Here is information on the 3 types...

1)  Reference - As you've stated, this is the basic 1-M relationship between tables which establishes a foreign key

2)  Glide List - While probably not a true M-M relationship, this allows you to have a reference field that can store multiple foreign keys in a comma-separated list so that you can display multiple items.  The challenge with this field type is that you can't dot-walk through the relationship like you can with a reference field holding a single value.

If you wanted a true M-M relationship you would want to create a full many-to-many table similar to the 'Affected CIs' related list on an incident record.

3)  Document ID - This field type is similar to a reference field in that it stores a single sys_id value that acts as a foreign key.  The difference is that it can store a sys_id pointing to any record in the system...not just a single table.  Document ID fields make this work because they are dependent on a second 'Table name' field.  A good example of this is the 'Approving' (document ID) field that works with the 'Source table' (table name) field.

Please mark this response correct if I've answered your question.  Thanks!

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2

quintenvandenb1
Giga Expert

GlideList can be used in the ListView to affect a collection of records. And a document Id is a generic field which could be a reference to any table. The document id contains the sys_id of the record and the table. Based on that, ServiceNow can generate a reference field from that.

Mark Stanger
Giga Sage

Here is information on the 3 types...

1)  Reference - As you've stated, this is the basic 1-M relationship between tables which establishes a foreign key

2)  Glide List - While probably not a true M-M relationship, this allows you to have a reference field that can store multiple foreign keys in a comma-separated list so that you can display multiple items.  The challenge with this field type is that you can't dot-walk through the relationship like you can with a reference field holding a single value.

If you wanted a true M-M relationship you would want to create a full many-to-many table similar to the 'Affected CIs' related list on an incident record.

3)  Document ID - This field type is similar to a reference field in that it stores a single sys_id value that acts as a foreign key.  The difference is that it can store a sys_id pointing to any record in the system...not just a single table.  Document ID fields make this work because they are dependent on a second 'Table name' field.  A good example of this is the 'Approving' (document ID) field that works with the 'Source table' (table name) field.

Please mark this response correct if I've answered your question.  Thanks!