Transcript The CA MDB

The CA MDB
Revised May 16 2006
CA MDB: Summary
- Primary version based on Ingres 3.0
- Other versions based on MS SQL Server, Oracle
- Includes thousands of tables, views, indexes
- Built by combining database models from many CA products
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How do you build an MDB?
- Single database instance
- Use unique data types
- Consistent schemas
- Naming conventions
- Stored procedures
- Design patterns
- Unified sets of tables for specific entities/objects
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Where is the MDB today?
- Single database instance
- Multiple definitions for some data
elements
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Today (continued)
- Mostly consistent schemas
- Naming conventions
- Stored procedures
- One unified set of tables: for assets
- eIAM stores applications’ authentication, authorization,
access control information
- May adopt industry standards (e.g. CIM) when possible
- Single set of data owners, permissions
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Unified model for assets
- Set of tables defined by developers for:
- ServiceDesk
- Unicenter NSM
- Argis
- Unicenter Asset Management
- Entries made by one application visible to all
- DB triggers used to update other tables, perform additional operations
when assets are added.
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Revolutionary Change
- Applications can access other app’s data directly
- Simplifies reporting, analysis across apps
- Multiple products can share database server
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What the current MDB offers
- Central Management
- Standard Configurations
- Standard Patch and Upgrade
- A set of best practices for:
- Scalability
- Fault Tolerance
- Securability (firewall and NAT)
- MDB Federation
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
What the current MDB offers
- Product Specific Federation
- Core Bridge
- Service Desk multiple MDBs, contact replication, and
request broker
- Desktop and Server Management hierarchical selective
replication (2-tier but n-tier designed)
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
What the current MDB offers
- An ERwin physical model-based collection of all tables &
columns used by the CA products
- A physical model that was assembled by combining DDL from
various product teams
- A breakdown of tables & columns into Subject Areas that map
to the respective CA products
- A partial definition of the relationships between the tables that
comprise MDB
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
What the current MDB offers
- A model that supports basic IP-address based asset
reconciliation capabilities
- A model that recognizes the central importance of asset
and provides some modeling of the complexity of asset
- Asset Logical model is documented
- Tools used in conjunction with ADT allow asset import
using the common object registration API (CORA)
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Summary
- MDB is used in r11 products and value is huge
- Most applications co-exist, with selective sharing
- Several “best in class” products coordinate use of, and share
data – especially for assets and users
- Application-specific interfaces, communications are still used
- Deployment options generally rich
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Common Misunderstandings…
- MDB’s availability on a specific DB does not mean all
applications support that DB
- No common method/API for modifying all data in MDB
- Not used consistently by all CA products
- MDB is not a CMDB
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Asset Information Scenarios
- ServiceDesk and Argis:
- As Service Desk is about to enter data about an asset, the
user can search through existing assets in the MDB,
including those created by Argis.
- Users can pick an existing asset and avoid data entry, or
the addition of a duplicate entry.
- NSM and UAM:
- When Discovery runs, every object is registered as an
asset. UAM is triggered by asset registration and can push
out an agent to do a full hardware and software inventory.
- Trigger provides the “glue” between "continuous discovery"
and UAM.
- Result: When an incident is recorded in ServiceDesk, SD will
check registered assets, even those discovered by NSM, and
the inventory info will be available as well.
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Limitations
- No public (client) API for asset definition through the MDB
- Definitions may change, or may rely upon undocumented
behavior or business logic
- Exception: UAPM packages a copy of ADT with CORA
integration to add assets
- Existing application-specific APIs should be used (for now)
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Deployment Choices
- One product, one MDB instance
- Multiple products, one MDB instance
- Multiple products, multiple MDB instances
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Integration
- Model level: normalized data
- Database level
- triggers, stored procedures
- Application level
- API, scripts
- “Bridge” for CORe
- Presentation level
- Portal, Reporter, F&T
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Deployment Issues
- Ingres issues
- Performance – you architect in scalability
- MDB issues
- May not want information shared between
applications; e.g. UAM assets become managed
objects in NSM
- Legally may be unable to put all data in one MDB
- Application issues?
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Moving Forward – MDB
-Distributed installation and access services
-Federation services
-Abstraction Layers
-Connectors
-Platform and additional RDBMS Support
-“ Hot” upgrade services
-Granular DDL definition/extension
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Moving Forward – MDB
- Some Techie Details Under Study:
- Reduce data type duplication
- Normalize data model
- Add common methods across applications for:
- Extension of models
- Entity addition, updates
- Address MDB-specific issues:
- Filtering of shared data
- Replication vs. application distribution
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Moving Forward – MDB
- More Techie Details Under Study :
- A model that supports a central Asset registry to which all
physical instances can register Assets
- A model that supports a technical solution without a single point
of failure
- A model that can scale in a predictable manner
- A model that supports a central authentication and consistent
data authorization facility
- A model documented at the entity and attribute level
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Moving Forward – MDB
- Even More Details Under Study :
- A model in which non IP-address based assets are
accommodated
- A model that recognizes and registers assets with satisfactory
performance
- A model in which critical taxonomies (Owned versus Discovered
Asset, Logical versus Physical Asset, Locations, Organizations,
Contacts/Users, Services, and Configuration) are normalized
© 2005 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, services marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.