19.08 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in version 19.08 of BMC CMDB.

Additional Remedy ITSM 19.08 enhancements Open link

BMC CMDB enhancements

The following sections provide information about the enhancements in BMC CMDB 19.08.

New user interface for Class Manager

Class Manager has a new user interface that you can access quickly and easily. You can perform the following tasks related to the data model by using Class Manager:

Define the properties of the class.
You can define the type of class, how it stores data, and (for relationship classes) the relationship type.
Configure instance auditing for the class.
Auditing enables you to track the changes made to instances of a class.
Define one or more CI and relationship class attributes.
Specify permissions.
If you do not specify permissions for a class, BMC CMDB assigns default permissions.
Specify indexes.
Indexing can reduce database query time, so you must index attributes that you expect users to use in queries frequently.
Propagate attributes in a weak relationship.
This step is necessary only if you have created a relationship class that has a weak relationship in which the attributes from one class should be propagated to another class.

Similar to the previous releases of BMC CMDB, Class Manager requires you to have AR Administrator (ARADMIN) permissions to create and edit classes. For more information, see Modifying the data model by using Class Manager.

Additional capabilities added to the new user interface of Atrium Integrator

Additional capabilities are now available in the new user interface of Atrium Integrator for end-to-end job creation and Data Store Management.

Atrium Integrator supports the connection to the following type of data stores so that data from an external data source can be imported into CMDB:

AR System
File-based data stores (CSV and XML)
Database (DB2, MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase)

In addition, you can edit, refresh, and delete a data store from Atrium Integrator. You can also test a data store connection.
The following figure shows the data stores interface:

For more information, see Creating a data store connection for the data transfer.

By using Atrium Integrator, you can create a job for importing data into BMC CMDB.

For more information, see Creating an Atrium Integrator job to import data.

New user interface for Federation Manager

Federation Manager is accessible from the new CMDB interface. You can use this interface to create data stores that use Launch in Context links to make external data available in CMDB. For more information, see Making external data available to CMDB by using cross-launch links in the Federation Manager.

Added impact simulation capabilities to the CMDB Explorer

A change manager or asset manager can use BMC CMDB Impact Simulator to simulate the effect of a change in a CI, for example adding or removing a CI, or a CI being unavailable in a service model, so that they can quickly and accurately identify the impact of this change on the business service.

For more information, see Simulating the impact of changes to CIs.

Cross launch BMC Discovery from the CMDB Explorer

To view additional information of a CI that originated from Discovery, you can open a CI from the CMDB Explorer and view its properties in BMC Discovery.

In CMDB Explorer, you can also open a CI in the product catalog form or its service context summary. You can configure these settings in Federation Manager.

For more information, see Configuring the access method to view CIs in Discovery by using Federation Manager.

Saving search queries in the CMDB Dashboard UI

Create a search query, save the query as a personal or global query, edit the query, and use the saved queries to search for CIs in BMC CMDB. Saving the search query enables you to reuse the query and also share the queries with other users.

For more information, see Creating, saving, and sharing search queries.

Enhancements to Common Data Model

Common Data Model has the following enhancements:

Moved the isVirtual attribute to BMC_BaseElement class from BMC_System, BMC_SystemComponent, and BMC_Collection classes. You can use this attribute to enable any device (CI) to be represented logically rather than as a physical entity.
Added the Pillar attribute to BMC_ElementLocation class that helps include granularity while defining the location of a CI. In earlier versions of CMDB, you could add details regarding floor, row, rack, and shelf to the location relationship of a CI. However, because most floor plans often reference the Pillar attribute for locations, there was no way to store this information. You can use the Pillar attribute in the BMC_ElementLocation class to define the location of a CI.
Added additional attributes to the Tag class for cloud instances. In earlier releases, you could not add tags to cloud instances and relate them with the cloud services. You can create tags for cloud instances and relate the tags with the cloud services.
Added a new generic relationship called RelatedTo to define a relationship between the source and destination CI.

In earlier releases, you could define only specific relationships between a source CI and a destination CI based on the CI types. In this release, you can create relationships between CIs of different classes, which may not have a dependency between those CIs.
Added the isDR attribute to the BMC_BaseRelationship class to represent disaster recovery. This attribute enables you to indicate if a source CI provides disaster recovery to a destination CI.

For more information, see Summary of changes to the Common Data Model.

What else changed in this release

There are changes to the out-of-the-box objects. For a complete list of modified objects, see List of objects modified in 19.08 Open link in the Remedy Deployment online documentation.

Additionally, the following table lists the changes in the product behavior:

Update	Product behavior in versions earlier than 19.08	Product behavior in version 19.08
New user interface for the Class Manager	You could view and edit a class at the same time.	You have a separate edit mode that you can access by clicking Edit.
	The Class Manager displayed all properties whether you could edit them or not.	The Class Manager displays only those properties that you can edit.
	Groups and roles were displayed in a single list.	Groups and roles are displayed separately, for a better understanding.
	Class Manager displayed relationship properties such as cardinality in the following way:	The Class Manager displays properties such as directionality, cardinality, and class type in the information pane.
	In Atrium Core Console, federated classes are created in Federation Manager by using the retrieval method.	The federated data classes are view-only in Class Manager.
New user interface for the Federation Manager	New federated data stores were defined by using a wizard.	The complete workflow of creating a federated data store is performed in just one page. You can also edit an existing data store on the same page. You can use Federation Manager to create data stores that use launch in context links to make external data available in CMDB. See, Making external data available to CMDB by using cross-launch links in the Federation Manager. To create a data store using the retrieval method, you must use Federation Manager in the Atrium Core Console just as in the earlier versions. See, Accessing or retrieving federated data by creating federated relationship and data classes.
Impact Simulator	Atrium Impact Simulator used Adobe Flash as a default option to render impact simulation.	CMDB Impact Simulator uses HTML as a default option to render impact simulation because Adobe has announced the end of development and distribution of Flash Player by the end of the year 2020. For more details, see Adobe flash in Remedy.
Atrium Integrator updates	You could create a job using the Job Builder wizard as shown in the following figure.	The process to create a job is not wizard-based, and you must provide all the details on a single Create Imports Job page as shown in the following figure.
	While creating a job, you could select CI types to transfer from a list of templates.	CI templates are not provided for this release.
	While creating a job, you could create a relationship mapping: between parent class and child class by selecting child class columns from an association file instead of an inline association column	While creating a job, you can create a relationship mapping between parent and child class by selecting child class columns. The option to create a relationship mapping from an association file instead of an inline association column is not supported.
A common identifier to trace the flow of execution of APIs across log files	No common identifier available to trace the flow of execution of APIs across log files.	In AR Server and CMDB Engine, a trace ID is a common identifier available in the log files, such as CMDB engine debug log, NE plug-in server log, and share plug-in server log. By using a trace ID, you can: Trace the flow of execution of APIs across different log files. For example, you can correlate an AR API log file with a CMDB Engine debug log file by using the trace IDs in these log files. Verify that a particular log statement has arrived from a particular API. Correlate logs from different servers in a server group from the same client.
Normalization options when starting a normalization job.	In version 19.02, in the Start Job options in the Normalization Jobs page, the behavior of the Default and Normalize Delta options was the same, that is, to normalize only those CIs that were added after the previous normalization job was run.	The Default option runs the normalization job according to the settings in the Core Configurations for Normalization page. The Normalize Delta option continues to have the same behavior, that is, to normalize only those CIs that were added after the previous normalization job was run. The Normalize all instances option continues to normalize all CIs irrespective of the configurations.