Relationships between CSDM objects

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Relationships between CSDM objects

    This content explains how to configure and manage relationships between Common Service Data Model (CSDM) objects in ServiceNow, including business services, service offerings, business processes, and application services. These relationships are critical for accurately reflecting dependencies and associations within your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and leveraging Operational Resilience features for reporting and impact analysis.

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    Key Features

    • Main node configurations: Use these configurations to establish and maintain relationships between CSDM objects. The sngrcm2mprofileprofile table serves as the source for these relationships.
    • Relationship examples: A business service (BS1) can include multiple related objects such as service offerings (SO1, SO3), business processes (BP1, BP2), and application services (AS1). Dependencies between these objects can be nested, e.g., application service AS1 depending on AS2, which depends on a physical server (PS Apache03).
    • Operational Resilience integration: Entities involved in relationships must be set up in Operational Resilience to allow relationship data to be effectively imported and used for reporting and impact analysis.
    • Data sources for relationships: All CMDB relationships are stored in the cmdbrelci table. The scheduled jobs use the parent-child relationships to fetch related objects for inclusion in Operational Resilience.
    • Applicable relationships: Relationships can be established between:
      • Business services and service offerings, business processes, application services, and dependencies
      • Service offerings and business processes, application services, and dependencies
      • Business processes and application services and their dependencies
    • Reusable relationships: The same relationship types (e.g., business process relationships) can be applied across multiple forms, such as both Business Service and Service Offering forms.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By configuring relationships between CSDM objects through Main node configurations, you enable a comprehensive and accurate mapping of service components and their dependencies. This setup is essential for:

    • Enhancing your CMDB’s fidelity and integrity
    • Supporting Operational Resilience use cases such as business impact analysis (BIA), where dependencies are critical
    • Ensuring that scheduled jobs correctly import relationship data to keep resilience reporting current
    • Facilitating impact assessments by showing which services and processes depend on specific infrastructure or application components

    To implement, ensure that all related entities are configured in Operational Resilience, use Main node configurations to define relationships, and maintain the relationships in the CMDB as per your service model.

    You can configure relationships between various CSDM objects such as business services, service offerings, business processes, and application services by using the Main node configurations. The [sn_grc_m2m_profile_profile table] serves as the source table for establishing these relationships.

    Establishing relationships between different objects

    To illustrate the relationships between different CSDM objects, consider the following example of a business service (BS1).

    The business service (BS1) includes the following objects as shown in the example.
    • Service offering (SO1)
    • Business process (BP2)
    • Application service (AS1)
    • Service offering (SO3)
    CSDM objects.
    The Service offering (SO1) is related to the Business process (BP1) and Service offering (SO2). BP1 has the following dependencies:
    • Acer
    • PS Apache01

    BP2 has a dependency on PS Apache02. AS1 has a dependency on AS2 and AS2 has a dependency on PS Apache03.

    Note:
    When you set up the Main node configurations, you must ensure that the entities are set up in Operational Resilience. Only when these entities exist, relationships can be established between the CSDM objects and then data is brought into Operational Resilience for reporting.

    The Applies to field in a business impact analysis (BIA) shows the object that has the dependency. The example shows that the business process (BP1) has Acer as a dependency.

    Applies to field.Dependency.

    The dependency is also brought from the Parent field into Operational Resilience for the service offerings and application services. For example, the parent for service offering (SO3) is business service (BS1). Therefore, when the scheduled job is executed, it fetches SO3 as a configured relationship for business service (BS1).

    SO.

    All the CMDB relationships, as shown in the example, are maintained in the CI relationships [cmdb_rel_ci] table.

    CI relationships [cmdb_rel_ci] table.

    To bring these relationships into Operational Resilience, you must use the Main node configurations. For more information, see Configure the Main node configurations.

    You can establish the following relationships between objects such as business services, service offerings, and business processes.

    Table 1. Establishing relationships
    Entity Relationships
    Business services
    • Service offering for a business service: BS -> SO1, SO2
    • Business process for a business service
    • Application service for a business service
    • Dependencies for a business service
    Service offerings
    • Business process for a service offering
    • Application service for a service offering
    • Dependencies for a service offering
    Business processes
    • Application service for a business process
    • Dependencies for a business process

    The same relationship can be applied and used on multiple forms. For example, the business process relationship can be used on both Business service and Service offering forms.

    For information on the Main node configurations, see Main node configurations: A component of the Data Relationships Framework.