Changes to the BMC Atrium CMDB for BMC Remedy ITSM

Version 8.0 of BMC Remedy IT Service Management made important changes in the way BMC Remedy ITSM stores the attributes that it uses to describe configuration items (CIs). If you have custom programs or integrations that use asset lifecycle attribute data, you should review this topic because you may need to make changes to your procedures.

Impact of changes to Asset Management CI data

Earlier versions of BMC Remedy ITSM extended theBMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data model by adding a number of attributes that were used to track Asset Management CI data. These attributes included information about costs, foundational data such as company and location, and lifecycle information. In version 8.0 of BMC Remedy ITSM, asset lifecycle data was moved out of BMC Atrium CMDB and placed in a new BMC Remedy ITSM asset management form, AST:Attributes. Lifecycle data remains available through joins of the BMC.CORE:BMC_BaseElement form and AST:Attributes. This change occurred for the following reasons:

• Lifecycle data was not discoverable, and you did not need to reconcile it across multiple sources, so did not belong in the CMDB. 
• Some customers need to maintain separate permissions on these attributes. 
• Moving lifecycle data to AST:Attributes significantly improves CMDB performance.

Standard integration points and application forms were redesigned to accommodate this change, so customers who have upgraded to BMC Remedy ITSM 8.0 or later were not directly affected. But if your organization uses custom programs or integrations that use lifecycle data, those procedures may need to be modified to accommodate the new data structure.

Data migration resulting from an upgrade

The migration of lifecycle data to AST:Attributes happens during an upgrade from an earlier version of BMC Remedy ITSM. An option is provided to keep lifecycle data in the CMDB for those customers who want to maintain backward compatibility with earlier versions of BMC Remedy ITSM, but the recommended best practice is to migrate lifecycle to AST:Attributes and use joins to that form to make lifecycle attributes available to applications.

Refer to the following topics understand the impact of this change and to evaluate whether you need to modify your customizations to accommodate the change.

1. Evaluate the impact of upgrading on customizations
   1. Understanding how upgrades occur
   2. Data structure and code changes
   3. Join architecture
2. Determine whether customizations refer to deprecated fields
   1. Updates to CI lifecycle data attributes
   2. BMC Remedy ITSM attributes that remain in the BMC Atrium CMDB
3. Migrate Asset Lifecycle data from Atrium CMDB
   1. Loading BMC Asset Management data
   2. Backward compatibility for the BMC Atrium CMDB API