Federation Framework for Federated TQL Queries

Definitions and Terms

Reconciliation data. The rule for matching CIs of the specified type that are received from the CMDB and the external data repository. The reconciliation rule can be of three types:

• ID reconciliation. This can be used only if the external data repository contains the CMDB ID of reconciliation objects.

• Property reconciliation. This is used when the matching can be done by properties of the reconciliation CI type only.

• Topology reconciliation. This is used when you need the properties of additional CITs (not only of the reconciliation CIT) to perform a match on reconciliation CIs. For example, you can perform reconciliation of the node type by the name property that belongs to the ip_address CIT.

Reconciliation object. The object is created by the adapter according to received reconciliation data. This object should refer to an external CI and is used by the Mapping Engine to connect between the external CIs and the CMDB CIs.

Reconciliation CI type. The type of CIs that represent reconciliation objects. These CIs must be stored in both the CMDB and in the external data repositories.

Mapping engine. A component that identifies relations between CIs from different data repositories that have a virtual relationship between them. The identification is performed by reconciling CMDB reconciliation objects and external CI reconciliation objects.

Mapping Engine

Federation Framework uses the Mapping Engine to calculate the federated TQL query. The Mapping Engine connects between CIs that are received from different data repositories and are connected by virtual relationships. The Mapping Engine also provides reconciliation data for the virtual relationship. One end of the virtual relationship must refer to the CMDB. This end is a reconciliation type. For the calculation of the two subgraphs, a virtual relationship can start from any end node.

Federated Adapter

The Federated adapter brings two kinds of data from external data repositories: external CI data and reconciliation objects that belong to external CIs.

• External CI data. The external data that does not exist in the CMDB. It is the target data of the external data repository.

• Reconciliation object data. The auxiliary data that is used by the federation framework to connect between CMDB CIs and external data. Each reconciliation object should refer to an External CI. The type of reconciliation object is the type (or subtype) of one of the virtual relationship ends from which data is retrieved. Reconciliation objects should fit the adapter received to reconciliation data. The reconciliation object can be one of three types: IdReconciliationObject, PropertyReconciliationObject, or TopologyReconciliationObject.

In the DataAdapter-based interfaces (DataAdapter, PopulateDataAdapter, and PopulateChangesDataAdapter), the reconciliation is requested as part of the query definition.

See Interactions between the Federation Framework, Server, Adapter, and Mapping Engine for diagrams illustrating the interactions between the Federation Framework, UCMDB, adapter, and Mapping Engine.