Understanding Service Modeling › Service Modeling Terminology and Concepts › Service Concepts › Relationships

Relationships

Relationships in a service model show how CIs are linked to form the service topology. A relationship between linked objects has a semantic (name or type, for example 'HasAccessTo') and a propagation type (for example, 'Custom'). CA SOI relationships correspond to instances of USM BinaryRelationship type. If you import a service from a connector, its relationships in the domain manager are mapped to USM relationships.

You can assign relationships to every link between objects in a service model. To assign relationships, you select the appropriate propagation type and then select a relationship from the list of relationships that map to that propagation type.

The available USM BinaryRelationship semantics are as follows:

Note: For details about each type or information about relationship updates, see the USM schema documentation. For information about how to access the schema documentation, see the Connector Guide.

Has Access To

Specifies that a CI accesses another CI's functionality. Use this relationship to indicate that a resource can access another resource, or that software communicates with or accesses a specific entity, such as a database. This relationship differs from Has Requirement For, which indicates a mandatory presence of the target CI for the source CI to function.

Has Contact

Specifies that a CI plays a specific contact role for another CI, such as an owner or assignee.

Has Detail

Specifies that a CI provides additional information for another CI. For example, an Asset CI can relate to another CI that provides more detail about the asset.

Has Member

Specifies that a child CI is a member of another CI. For example, several User CIs can be members of a user group. This relationship is the default assignment.

Has Requirement For

Specifies that a CI requires the existence of another CI, its operation, or both. For example, an Application CI can require the operation of an Application Server CI.

Is Affected By

Specifies that a CI impacts another CI and that custom policy defines the impact. Whereas the Has Requirement For relationship causes impact when the target CI is in a critical or down state, Is Affected By lets you configure the scenarios that impact the source CI. For example, a web server farm group is impacted if 40 percent of its ComputerSystem CIs are down.

Note: CIs in maintenance mode are excluded from custom policy calculations that are related to average or percentage.

Is Bound To

Specifies a symmetric relationship where two CIs are intrinsically linked, so that one cannot function without the other.

Is Cause Of

Specifies that a ChangeOrder is the cause of a Request, Incident, or Problem being opened.

Is Clone Of

Indicates that the source CI is a clone of the Target CI and that the two elements are synchronized.

Is Composed Of

Specifies a compositional relationship where a source CI is the aggregate of several target CIs.

Is Connected To

Indicates a network connection carrying data between the source and target CIs, such as between physical ports or application components.

Is Discovered By

Indicates that the specified ManagementAgent target CI discovers and manages the source CI.

Is Evolution Of

Indicates that the source CI is evolved from the target. Examples include next generations of hardware or software.

Is Hosted By

Indicates that the target CI hosts the source CI. This relationship is the inverse of Is Host For.

Is Host For

Indicates that a source CI is hosting a target CI. For example, a ComputerSystem CI can host a VirtualSystem or RunningSoftware CI.

Is Impacted By

Indicates that another CI impacts or affects the source CI. For example, a Memory child CI or Port child CIs affect the parent ComputerSystem CI.

Is Instance Of

Specifies that a source CI is an occurrence of a target CI. For example, a ProvisionedSoftware CI can run an instance of a RunningSoftware CI.

Is Location For

Specifies that a source CI defines the target CI location.

Is Manager For

Specifies that a source CI controls or manages a target CI. For example, a DatabaseInstance CI can manage a Database CI.

Is Request For

Specifies that a source CI has been created to create, provision, or otherwise handle the target CI.

Is Resolved By

Specifies that the specified ChangeOrder target CI resolves or corrects a Request, Incident, or Problem source CI.

Is Result Of

Specifies that a source CI is created as a result of an automated workflow or manual processing of a target CI.

Relationships display as color-coded arrows between two objects in the Topology view. The Topology view is available on the Operations Console and the Service Modeler. Propagation types of relationships define CA SOI derives CI and service impact.

More Information:

Propagation Types