Relationships & Dependencies

Definitive questions

• +What table stores CI relationships?
• +Which direction does 'Depends on' point?
• +What is a suggested relationship?
• +Do relationships have attributes?

Scenario drills

1. Impact analysis returns nothing

   “Change on 'db-prod-01' shows no affected services. What's wrong?”

   Approach

   • Check cmdb_rel_ci direction — the DB must be the CHILD of 'Depends on' relationships from applications.
   • Verify a path exists from the DB up through applications to a business service.
   • Confirm 'operational' status on intermediate CIs; retired CIs break traversal.

   new GlideRecord('cmdb_rel_ci')
     .addQuery('child', dbSysId)
     .addQuery('type.name','Depends on::Used by');

   Alternate approach

   Alternate: use the BSM map or 'Impacted Services' related list on the CI — visual traversal often exposes broken links faster than scripting.

   Pitfall

   Reversing parent/child on custom relationship types silently breaks impact analysis.