About publication filters for BMC Atrium CMDB publishing

To define the data selected for publication, Publishing Server uses publication filters.

When a publication is requested, you can specify the publication filters that must be published. For example, the publish command publish -p "FilterIds=Filter1,Filter2" publishes only filters that have Filter1 and Filter2 as IDs. By default, all publication filters registered for the publication environment are applied.

An automatically triggered publication always publishes all registered active publication filters.

Types of publication filters

The following are the three types of publication filters that are available.

Management Data

The out-of-the-box ServiceModelSet filter publishes management data. It publishes management data with the attribute value ServiceModelSet==IN, and unpublishes management data with the attribute value ServiceModelSet==OUT_OF_IN.

Publish Only Myself

Only configuration items (CIs) selected by the filter (CIs that satisfy the filter's selection condition) are published. No impact relationships are published.

Publish Myself and My Providers

Each CI selected by the filter along with all of its providers (not only the direct providers but also the providers of the direct providers, and so on), that is the complete impact model is published. You can cut the impact model by setting PublishToSIM=No, Myself and My Providers on a CI in BMC Atrium CMDB. This setting applies to all the publication filters (and not just to the out-of-the-box "Atrium - CIs and Providers" publication filter). The CI with PublishToSIM=No, Myself and My Providers (and all of its providers) is not published and therefore, all of its outgoing impact relationships are also not published.

If in BMC Atrium CMDB, PublishToSIM is set to "No: not me nor my providers", then this CI and its providers will not be published as provider of a CI that is selected to be published with its providers. However, the CI with the value "No: not me nor my providers" can still be selected by a publication filter, and is hence published according to the type of that filter (that is. as an isolated CI, or as a CI together with its providers).

Service models and instances of components and relationships are not imported if they are marked for deletion (MarkAsDeleted=Yes) in BMC Atrium CMDB.

Out-of-the-box publication filters

The following are the out-of-the-box publication filters that are available. These out-of-the-box filters are registered by default for the default publication environment as per the setting of the AtriumCMDBDefaultFilterIds parameter in the pserver.conf file:

AtriumCMDBDefaultFilterIds=PublishProvidersToSIM,ServiceModelSet,HomeCell,ExtAuth

ServiceModelSet

The ServiceModelSet filter is available out-of-the-box and selects and publishes management data (if ServiceModelSet==IN, or if ServiceModelSet==OUT_OF_IN). The filter ID of the other out-of-the-box publication filter ServiceModelSet is ServiceModelSet.

Atrium - Individual CIs

If in BMC Atrium CMDB, the CI's attribute PublishToSIM = Publish Only Myself, then the CI is selected by the Atrium - Individual CIs filter. Typically, you can configure this setting using BMC Impact Model Designer. The filter ID of this filter is PublishProvidersToSIM.

Atrium - CIs and Providers

If in BMC Atrium CMDB, the CI's attribute PublishToSIM = Publish Myself and My Providers, then the CI is selected by the Atrium  - CIs and Providers filter. Typically, you can configure this setting using BMC Impact Model Designer. The filter ID of this filter is PublishProvidersToSIM.

You can view the Atrium publication filters in the administration console, but you cannot modify these filters.

Publication filters guidelines

• Besides the Atrium - Individual CIs and Atrium - CIs and Providers publication filters to select components or impact models, you can also define additional publication filters (using the administration console). For more information, see Creating and editing publication filters in the administration console.
• A CI can be selected for publication by multiple publication filters. As long as a CI is selected for publication by at least one publication filter, the CI will be published.

Publish Myself and My Providers filter recommendations

A "Publish Myself and My Providers" publication filter results in an impact graph query on each of the CIs that satisfies the filter's selection criteria. This can be a time-consuming operation. Therefore, as a best practice:

• Avoid the scenario in which a top-level node is selected by more than one publication filter.
• Only the top-level CIs of impact models must satisfy the "Publish Myself and My Providers" filter's selection criteria. To identify a top-level node, set OnlyTopLevelCIs to T in the pserver.conf file. Setting this property causes the Publishing Server to select only the top-level nodes.
  When the OnlyTopLevelCIs parameter in the pserver.conf file is set to T, the Publishing Server selects only the top-level CIs (that is, CIs that are not impact providers) from BMC Atrium CMDB, even if a non top-level CI satisfies the Publish Me and My Providers publication filter selection criteria. This way, there is no performance impact if non top-level CIs satisfy the filter's condition. These non top-level CIs are expected to be providers of a top-level CI that is selected; hence their service impact model is already published as part of the service impact model of that top-level CI. If a non top-level CI is not published as part of the service impact model of a selected top-level CI, the OnlyTopLevelCIs parameter cannot be set to T.