Normalization and the Product Catalog

The Normalization Engine is a part of BMC CMDB, and uses the Product Catalog to normalize data before the Reconciliation Engine identifies and merges the data. A Product Catalog entry is not a Configuration Item (CI), but specifies the normalized attributes for a CI. 

 Normalization process and related components 

By default, the Normalization Engine does not consider the Product Catalog CI Type field, which defines the BMC CMDB class associated with a product, except to categorize instances on class (CTI Only mode). When both the Model and ManufacturerName attributes are NULL and if the Category, Type, and Item (CTI) values are populated, the Normalization Engine uses CI Type.

If required, Normalization can be set to take into account the Class while normalizing the CIs by using a configuration parameter. To enable this, create an entry in BMC.CORE.CONFIG:BMC_CMDBComponent form with the following details:

ComponentId:com.bmc.cmdb.normalizationEngine
PropertyName:Normalize_Class_Sensitive
PropertyValue:1

In the Product Catalog, you can set several status options for each product. The Approved status can affect normalization, depending on your settings. By default, all Product Catalog entries are unapproved, and the Normalization Engine normalizes CIs with unapproved entries in the Product Catalog. In the Normalization component, you can disable the Allow Unapproved CIs option to normalize only approved products. The Definitive Media Library (DML) and Definitive Hardware Library (DHL) are the approved software and hardware products in the Product Catalog. 

For example, a data set includes an instance of the  BMC_Product class named Financial Advisor Pro 1.0 that Calbro manufactures, and the Calbro administrator uses the default setting to normalize approved and unapproved CIs. The Product Catalog has a corresponding entry for that CI.

• If the Product Catalog entry for Calbro Financial Advisor Pro 1.0 is approved, the Normalization Engine normalizes the CI's attributes and categorization based on the Product Catalog entry. The Normalization Engine then updates the CI's NormalizationStatus attribute to Normalized and Approved.
• If the Product Catalog entry for Calbro Financial Advisor Pro 1.0 is not approved, the Normalization Engine normalizes the CI and updates the CI's NormalizationStatus attribute to Normalized but Not Approved.

The Managed status is used for tracking products in your organization. You can configure BMC CMDB so that CIs for unmanaged products are deleted from CMDB. In this way, you can leverage the Managed status to purge unnecessary CIs that are populated in the BMC CMDB data sets by the discovery tools.  

The other status options in the Product Catalog that do not affect normalization are Hide Product, Lifecycle, and Blacklisted Product.