Relationship governance rules

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Relationship governance rules

    Relationship governance rules in ServiceNow provide a framework to ensure consistency and validity when modeling relationships between Configuration Items (CIs) in the CMDB. These rules prevent the creation of invalid relationship types or directions between specific CI types, promoting uniformity across different applications such as Discovery and Service Mapping that generate CI relationships.

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    By defining valid relationship types and directions for pairs of CI types, relationship governance rules help maintain a consistent and accurate CMDB representation.

    Key Features

    • CMDB Dependent Relationship Rules: These include hosting and containment rules used for CI identification, accessible and modifiable via the CI Class Manager.
    • Suggested Relationships: Rules based on existing suggested relationships stored in the Suggested Relationship table; these are used in the CI relationship editor and can be managed through the CI Class Manager.
    • Reference Rules: Primarily used by Cloud Management to define valid combinations of referencing and referenced CIs in service definitions.
    • Built-in Valid Relationships: Predefined relationships such as those involving cmdbciendpoint and cmdbci classes are included in the base system to establish standard valid relationship types.
    • Inheritance Support: Rules support class inheritance, allowing relationships to be valid if they apply to parent classes of the involved CI types.
    • Multiple Relationship Types Allowed: More than one relationship type can exist between the same two CI types, enabling rich and diverse relationship modeling.
    • Rule Uniqueness and Domain Independence: Duplicate rules are not permitted, and the rules are not domain separated, ensuring global consistency.

    Key Outcomes

    • Consistent Relationship Modeling: Ensures that CI relationships comply with defined valid types and directions, reducing discrepancies and improving data quality.
    • Improved CMDB Health: Supports accurate service modeling and operational insights through valid and well-defined relationships.
    • Relationship Health Monitoring: The Relationship Health dashboard provides reports on the compliance of CI relationships with governance rules, highlighting any relationships that are not compliant.

    Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers can leverage relationship governance rules to maintain a clean and reliable CMDB by preventing invalid or inconsistent CI relationships. Using the CI Class Manager, administrators can view, create, and modify rules to align with organizational requirements. The Relationship Health dashboard enables ongoing monitoring and remediation of relationship compliance issues, ensuring the CMDB remains an accurate foundation for IT operations and service management.

    Relationship governance rules is a set of relationship rules used to ensure consistency and validity in modeling relationships between configuration items (CIs) in the CMDB. Use relationship governance rules to prevent the selection of relationship types or directions that are not allowed between specific CI types.

    Different applications such as Discovery and Service Mapping create relationships between CIs. Each application might use inconsistent relationship type or direction to represent the same entity, resulting in multiple views of the same CIs. Relationship governance rules define what are valid relationship types and valid directions between pairs of CI types resulting in valid and consistent relationships in the CMDB.

    Relationship governance rules consist of:
    • CMDB dependent relationship rules: Rules (hosting and containment rules) that are used for CI identification. You can view and modify dependent relationship rules in the CI Class Manager, after selecting a class from the class hierarchy and clicking Dependent Relationship.
    • Suggested relationships: Rules that are based on existing suggested relationships in the Suggested Relationship [cmdb_rel_type_suggest] table. Suggested relationships are used in the CI relationship editor. You can view and modify suggested relationships in the CI Class Manager, after selecting a class from the class hierarchy and clicking Suggested Relationships.
    • Reference rules: Rules that are used mostly by Cloud Management to represent all the possible valid combinations of pairs of referencing and referenced CIs in the service definition.
    • Built-in valid relationships: The following relationships are pre-defined in the base system as valid relationships:
      • cmdb_ci_endpoint -> Applicative Flow To::Applicative Flow From -> cmdb_ci_endpoint
      • cmdb_ci_endpoint -> Implement End Point To::Implement End Point From -> cmdb_ci
      • cmdb_ci -> Use End Point To::Use End Point From -> cmdb_ci_endpoint

    General behavior

    • Relationship governance rules support inheritance.

      For example, suppose that the suggested relationship cmdb_ci_appl Runs On::Runs cmdb_ci_hardware exists. Then a Runs On::Runs relationship between a cmdb_ci_appl_dot_net CI and a cmdb_ci_windows_server CI is valid. That is because .Net Application class inherits from the Application class and the Windows Server class inherits from the Hardware class.

    • Duplicate relationship governance rules are not allowed.
    • Relationship governance rules are not domain separated.
    • It is allowed to have more than one relationship type between the same two CI types.
      For example, the following relationships are valid:
      • cmdb_ci_appl Depends On::Used by cmdb_ci_service
      • cmdb_ci_appl Receives data from::Sends data to cmdb_ci_service

    Reports

    A relationship between CIs is considered valid if it conforms to any of the relationship governance rules. Use the Relationship Health dashboard to view reports about relationships health including relationships compliance with relationship governance rules. The 'Relationships not compliant with all relationship rules' report shows CI relationships that are not compliant with any of the relationship governance rules.