This documentation supports the 20.02 version of BMC CMDB.

To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Planning data normalization and the Product Catalog

This topic explains the purpose of data normalization and describes the Product Catalog component of BMC CMDB.

Overview of normalization and the Product Catalog

The Normalization Engine and the Product Catalog are separate components but are described together because of their close interaction. In the context of BMC CMDB, normalization refers to modifying configuration items (CIs) and relationships to conform to consistent standards. Primarily, this involves ensuring that product names and categorizations are consistent across different datasets and from different data providers. Data of the same type follows the same formatting conventions. In that role, the Normalization Engine typically relies on the Product Catalog.

For example, a product that might have different names representing the same product is Microsoft Office Word. Different discovery tools might record this product's name as Microsoft Office Word, MS Word, Word 2003, and so on. Each of these names might seem to represent a different product. The Normalization Engine can determine that these different names represent the same product, and alters each instance to use the approved name.

The benefit of normalization is that you get accurate results when searching or running reports for your data. For example, you can use the License Engine component of Remedy Asset Management determine whether your environment has more installed copies of something than your license allows.

The following figure shows a simplified flow of data from either discovery or transfer of existing data with Atrium Integrator. Data from each source or discovery tool is organized into datasets, which are then reconciled so that one production dataset represents your environment. You can also create datasets to group data; however, the datasets represented in the following figure depict the initial datasets that are part of the discovery or transfer process.

 Data flow in BMC CMDB

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