General Technical Information

This chapter describes general technical topics for all E-Bonding Runbook Body Contents, which must be considered when connecting a partner system.

Message Validation

E-Bonding Runbook validates in- and outbound XML messages using the provided XSDs.
The following validations are done:

Completeness and structure of XMLs
Validation of field lengths
Validation of enumeration values
Validation of mandatory attributes

For further information see the E-Bonding Object Excel Sheets and the XSDs.

Enumerations

Various fields in BMC Remedy ITSM are so called enumeration (enum) fields. That means that the readable value of the field is represented by an integer value internally. The values are hard coded in ITSM and cannot be set freely.
Inbound E-Bonding Runbook messages process numerical values only. The partner system is in charge of creating a mapping if the Standard Inbound Messages are used.
Outbound E-Bonding Runbook messages deliver generally numerical values. During design of the outbound "enabler" it can be decided whether the "enabler" or the partner does the mapping.
Enum lists can be gathered from the E-Bonding Object Excel Sheets or the XSDs.

NULL Values

E-Bonding Runbook handles NULL values a certain way, which must be considered from the partner system.
Inbound messages:
For messages being sent from the partner to E-Bonding Runbook there is a general option to set attributes to NULL explicitly. This is done with the key word $NULL$. Setting mandatory attribute to NULL is not allowed. Furthermore E-Bonding Runbook does not validate the ITSM Suite process. If it is procedural forbidden to set an ITSM field to NULL under certain cases the data transmission fails and the partner system is informed by an erroneous PACK.
Sample:
<bgi:Incident xmlns:bgi="http://www.vipcon.com/BGI/incCreateTicketRequest"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vipcon.com/BGI/incCreateTicketRequest incCreateTicketRequest.xsd ">
<bgi:General>
<bgi:Description>bgi:Description</bgi:Description>
<bgi:DetailedDescription>$NULL$</bgi:DetailedDescription>
…
Figure 15 Inbound Message Containing NULL
Outbound messages:
For messages, which are sent from E-Bonding Runbook to partners, fields containing the value NULL are delivered "empty".
Sample:
<bgi:Incident xmlns:bgi="http://www.vipcon.com/BGI/incCreateTicketRequest"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vipcon.com/BGI/incCreateTicketRequest incCreateTicketRequest.xsd ">
<bgi:General>
<bgi:Description>bgi:Description</bgi:Description>
<bgi:DetailedDescription/>
…
Figure 16 Outbound Message Containing NULL

Date Values

All data values, which are in- or outbound processed by E-Bonding Runbook, must be delivered in the so-called epoch (s) format. This applies to all timestamps that are used within the <Body> element. BMC Remedy AR System defines this format for Date/Time fields.
This is a standard date exchange format, which is a nine-digit integer. The calculation bases on seconds since January 1^st 1970. Partner systems must provide timestamps calculated based on the time zone UTC.
Example: 02.09.2014 15:06:30  140966319

E-Bonding Runbook Core Data Forms

In this chapter, all E-Bonding Runbook Core data forms.

Form Name

VIP:BGI:CONF:Version

VIP:BGI:CORE:GenerateGUID

VIP:BGI:KPIData

VIP:BGI:Log

VIP:BGI:Partner

VIP:BGI:PartnerGroups

VIP:BGI:PartnerMessages